Boom:
The sharp drop in the Māori Party vote has been driven by the sectarianism of Doc but also highlights why it is so important that Labour and the Māori Party work together.
This result is occurring as the economy collapses thanks to National’s free market experiment.
There is a rumour circulating from the Cabinet meeting yesterday that Winston Peters demanded from the Finance Minister Nicola Willis what her plan for the economy was.
The rumour states that Nicola Willis spoke for 5 minutes and was then interrupted by Winston again demanding an actual plan because he considered what she had to say was merely ‘talking points’, it was at this moment that the Finance Minister is rumoured to have surprisingly burst into tears.
Is it true?
Who can tell, but what we can tell you is that the Economy is way more fucked than you currently think it is and it’s been caused not by the extra borrowing Labour needed to save the country from a once in a century pandemic but from Nicola Willis’ own economic policy that has amputated state spending and sent the economy crashing into a doom loop it can’t pull out of.
Bernard Hickey is scathing…
The Government’s self-administered GDP growth noose just keeps tightening. Having talked up a partial recovery in some leading indicators in July, PM Christopher Luxonnow faces more uncomfortable news from the bleeding edge of the economy.
Both the services and manufacturing sectors of the economy contracted again in August, raising fresh doubts about the long-awaited economic recovery that 250 basis points of rate cuts was supposed to deliver. The BusinessNZ-BNZ PSI surveypublished yesterday showed another slide into contraction for the services sector, which makes up more than 60% of the economy. This adds to Friday’s PMI survey showing the manufacturing sector falling back into recession again.
This was the 18th consecutive month of seasonally-adjusted contraction in a key leading indicator watched closely by the Reserve Bank. New Zealand is exceptional in being the only country in the Anglo-American sphere being in contraction. Unlike Australia, the UK and the US, our central bank and Government have tightened monetary and fiscal policy at the same time, and much more severely than others.
…the post covid bitterness that gripped the electorate in 2023 and elected a hard right Government with a brutal economic policy is bearing the fruit of its bitter harvest and Kiws are suddenly realising what that actually means in practise.
NZ is made up of 3 huge sparsely populated Islands, the free market dynamics that bring costs down rely upon a population density we simply don’t have and that’s why NZ has always relied on the State being a 40% foundation stone. This Government has ignored that, cut back on public services while borrowing for tax cuts and landlord loopholes and hoped that the market will step in and do the job cheaper.
It hasn’t.
It won’t.
National’s ideological experiment has failed and you are all paying the price.
We are in serious economic trouble here and Labour’s incrementalism will be as damaging as National’s free market fanaticism.
We need bold courageous leadership.
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The government wants to destroy the NZ economy so its wealthy offshore benefactors can buy half the country for next to nothing when we’re on our knees.
Winnie could be our only hope, but he needs to do more than get No Boats to cry from her ice.
He needs to call a snap election.
Agreed Rangi. The economic contraction and higher unemployment feels like a choice the government has made and is explicitly pursuing. The availability of distressed assets and businesses and a cheap, compliant workforce will benefit those with access to capital and looking to buy up at the bottom of the cycle.
Kia ora Rangi, Winnie? Our only hope? The right dishonorable vicious divisive race baiting Peter’s?
Even National couldn’t stand his opportunism, 45 years in politics with a gold card to prove it! Got into politics on the back of Ngatiwai’s win in the land court (his own iwi) Apart from that what’s he done really for the social progress of this Whenua ? Really Rangi? BTW did any reporter/media ask Whinny the vote soliciting opportunist if he was vaccinated when he sashayed/walked through (unmasked of course for the camera’s) mandate/anti vax protesters ??
His childhood ambitions were to be an All Black, own a racehorse and become prime minister. Vice prime minister and an overabundance of vice! All Black yeah na, own a racehorse, tick!
You set a low bar for hope Rangi.
If Winnie could force an election and get in we might promise him the PM position and keep our promise – unlike pollies so often.
The arithmetic says that the only coalition that’s likely to be able to form a government is what’s already in power. The chances of getting New Zealand back on track don’t seem that good. Labour really need to step up and pass that 40% threshhold.
Labour will pass the 40% 12 months to go no need to panic .
Based on the premise they are not National, not on any great policy reveal.
But but….Nikki No Boats promised us Ben and Jerry’s icecream instead of dirt tracking it with Tip Top and movie Tickets instead of Net Flicks with cheap ferries as the cherry on top….
Suuuuurrely she can’t be wrong????…especially whe she’s been overseen by Luxon, the guy who is ” great with numbers” and the 40 Year Old Virgin , Seymour..
So fuckin dumb Liz Truss pointed out what would happen if we went down this path. Labour are useless. It would be a dream if Greens could lead the country.
Liz Truss was an empty vessel into which ‘free market’ thinktanks like the IEA could pour their destructive nonsense. Nicola Willis seems to have performed a similar function for the NZ Initiative. The major economic policy instruments of the neoliberal state (interest rates and government spending) are not achieving what they are supposed to, and the animal spirits of the market are not creating general prosperity.
Oh dear!
But does the NZ left have a new economic idea that will convince voters? Or are we doomed to forever drive in and out of the same dead-end street?
Anyone with a functioning brain knows that Luxon, Willis, Seymour, Winnie and all the other seat warming clingon’s are floundering, don’t have a clue, no workable plan and are panicking. Looking at those poll results the even bigger dilemma for the country is the number of voters in supporting the aforementioned failures would appear not to have a functioning brain. What does the future hold if approximately half the electorate is clueless.
Anyone that thinks that the Maori Party is a 4.6% plus Party Vote outfit is dreaming. At best they are a 2.5%/3% Party who may win between 5 and All of the Maori Electorate seats.
Unless of course the multitude of Maori that do not support them stand up and bring them into line – in which case the Activist Vote may disappear and then they too may well disappear from Parliament.
However, come election time the Greens will be crucified as a tax and spend..and borrow government. This simplistic falsehood will prevail. The timid kiwis left after all the emigration of the young, the brightest, will retreat to the safety of Lab/,Natz empty promises
Salt water has good properties, cleaning, antiseptic? I think that this Government and its Finance Minister, said to have cried, need more tears to help them function over the end of their reign. They need reining in! Note, that I learned the difference in my education, so new Education Minister could do with some tears also about her wonky ideas.
We should all now be at the point where we could cry on demand, so let’s bottle them up in a small clean, recycled jar used for NZ made herbal sauce’ properly washed and rinsed and air-dried as demanded by MOBIE or Health and Safety.
Screw down the lid well, like the Police and IRD and Treasury which should have their portion of tears also. Do it now. These people are getting dirtier, greasier, and more septic every week, and we are becoming weak as a result. Again, I point out my education has informed me of the difference between those two words, and a lot of others that differ from the intended truth by various degrees, so these educated clowns can stop ‘rabbiting on’ which is a vulgar expression used by the common people.
I find The Free Dictionary useful for checking on words for veracity. Just a tip for this government and any other that manages to uncoil itself and hiss; (have just been reading Harry Potter, very good analogies there!)
The Free Dictionary https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com › rabbiting+on
rabbiting on – Idioms by The Free Dictionary
rabbit on To talk continually for an excessive or irritating length of time. Originally derived from the Cockney rhyming slang term “rabbit and pork,” meaning “talk.” Primarily heard in UK…
Labour should be in the 40% area with this present govt. The fact that they are not, says they are doing something wrong. If Chippie were to be man enough to fall on his sword they’d shoot up immediately because people would feel that they were being listened to, at last.
Whatever Labour is offering at the moment is not enough. They have almost lost my vote with their pathetic reactions to this awful corrupt govt. There must be change. Chippie didn’t deliver and more of the same, won’t do. How hard is it for him to see that?
Yes – listened to good; acted on practically essential.
So true and we need to continually remind ourselves of this point.
We don’t need chippy’s earnest eyes, his toying with sausage rolls, his well intentioned blather or his indecision over CGT and wealth tax.
We need someone with testosterone to lay out in the open just how evil and corrupt this government is, how they need to be smashed (or pilloried), and what solutions they have to put in front of the populace.
People like Peter’s pompous poaka, Willis, Stanford, Simian Brown, and all the other flatfish floundering on the mudbank deserve an opposition leader that is will to put a knife between their eyes, for their own sake as much as anyone elses.
‘Flatfish, floundering on the mud-bank’, so poetic and evocative. That’s exactly what they are like.
And Chippy with his ‘earnest eyes, toying with sausage rolls’ does not cut it. He needs to be decisive and go. If he really loved AO/NZ he would. It seems he’s not much better than Luxon. Thinks he can’t be replaced.
Is testosterone a word allowed in these trans days? Frankly I wish that a muscled, well-brained man would gallop in, throw NZAO over his saddle and ride into a happy sunny future where he has built a lovely little home for 5 (million). We are very prolific at accumulating a higher population.
As a second option go and see Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Kieran McNulty could probably do it, but unfortunately he wouldn’t until other of his colleagues pull the plug on the nice-but-uninspring-sausage roll
it’s not as if there aren’t any other possibilities but they suffer from
too much Mr. Nice Guy-itis.
Chippy has lost his edge and is dull as ditchwater.
He should be making mincemeat of no talent Luxon. Tearing him to shreds!
The sharp drop in the Māori Party vote has been driven by the sectarianism of Doc but also highlights why it is so important that Labour and the Māori Party work together.
I don’t know what the above means so looked up Doc. acronym/abbrv.
Department of Conservation
https://www.doc.govt.nz › news › media-releases › 2025-media-releases
2025 media releases – Department of Conservation
Sep 3, 2025View DOC media releases from 2025.
Date: 02 August 2025 Source: Office of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Conservation Unleashing economic growth on one third of New Zealand’s land will create …
Or Medical – Doc
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/572385/docs-to-decide-on-whether-to-strike-again
Your tears do not suffice, Willis. Forget your failed ideology and start cleaning up your mess.
The music has stopped, and the “NZ Initiative” ie the Business RoundTable in drag are tripping over their own stupidly big shoes.
Where is Labour? Got no policy? Then who cares.
Things are wide open for any even vaguely sensible party – ie none that are presently in Parliament.
Forget the noise,
NZ’s immediate problem is how to cleanly break with our economic dependency upon the USA.
The US empire is collapsing, in real time and at a frightening speed. The geopolitical arena is rapidly reshaping, BRICS and the South is the future.USA’s time in the sun is over, it’s desperately flailing, both internally and externally.
This move to distance ourselves should transcend party politics.
You are right. It’s going to be disastrous and this govt. can’t handle good times, let alone bad times. Their degrees in English Literature will not suffice.
US is tearing itself apart. There could be a soft secession between red and blue states. It could break into about 4 different countries. Some states could join Canada. Lots of possibilities, all of which involve a huge amount of disruption and adjustment. It will not be easy. But it won’t be easy staying United either.
That would be the preferred option but red states have to start paying their own way more.
For every dollar Mississippi sends in tax to Washington, it receives more than $2.50. For every dollar a state like New Jersey contributes to federal funds, it receives just over 90 cents. Red states are being carried and paid to be useless. If blue states with-held their federal taxes, things could get very nasty.
Blue states boast the best educated and most productive people, but they can’t improve red state education over night. They are looking at decades of readjustment OR flying apart.
Well joy you are full of the blarney this afternoon,see that’s the trouble with left leaning voters all they do is criticize and run down leaders, that’s why Jacinda had had enough because even though many people supported her many others were swayed by cookers, greed and tax cuts and thought they would be better off well guess what ???.lets keep up the criticism and see what this country will be like after another 3 years of this lot who calls has the gall to call themselves the government
Half of fonterra sold
Lowest number of animals processed for export for the last 40 years
carter holt harvey closing mills as fast as they can
no new ferries
3 billion hand out to property speculators which would have paid for the new ferries and docks ,or built Dunedin hospital which would have been nearly finished by now or 30000 more state houses which would have employed every builder that has left the country .
GROWTH MY ARSE .
Crocodile tears from Willis she has no empathy it’s all a show to her, and does she really care about the people’s lives she is destroying. Also, she wanted that job and the power that comes with it. How does that saying go, if you can’t handle the heat in the kitchen get out’.
Parliament question time today, not the pryle off us, who you. The Kiwi, has seen the light, and run ed for cover.
It’s time to nominate bird of the year. I go for the ‘Screechy Willis’ if only because (thankfully), it’s about to go extinct
What should have been a time of celebration and tatou tatou, Tākuta Ferris ignored Hone Harawira’s advice, shit all over Oriini Kaipara’s fabulous win in Tamaki Makaurau, and doomed this country to another three years of National.
Arrogant and hostile – against what? Too young to be a politician. A great example of why just reducing voting age will increase the know-all style which finds some rising concern to hang a hat on and make their mark on. Those who want to make their mark should do so in written education projects that meet basic levels of fact and brainwork first. Then you can chose the best and right thing to say at any given moment and when it is good to just nod and say I don’t think, I need to have this explained and its outcome as well to consider it etc. Just like a bucket of cold water on hotheads those words. This is our life not your petty sports argument or theory about sex and science for the 21st century – you don’t know about the past so how can you spout value.
The left must show unity. Forget the small differences that separate us, stop being critical of each other and get together to beat the scourge.
The CoC is the enemy, not other people on the left. Ferris forgot this when he got on his soap box and now he could drag us all down with him. I hope he’s proud.
He should apologize to his party and the rest of us and then, he should shut up for a while.
TPM has a year to calm down and learn to cooperate without undermining their friends. They could be useful on the left, if they want to be.
It seems your advice is falling on deaf ears and now their Party boss is joining Ferris and in doing so driving a bigger wedge between them and Labour
Don’t talk pie in the sky about nationalising things etc. Think of small things that will help us keep on and regain some of the ground we have lost. We may have only one shot at getting onto the lifeboat, don’t count on the rescue boat yet, just stay on top. I think of that interesting story about the guy and the tiger that ended up together at sea and had to survive in alert cooperation; when they got to an island they still had problems.
(Life of Pi by Yann Martell.)
The summaries of the book are relevant to NZAO and we people trying to stay afloat. We have been arguing for many decades in a linear, concrete way and making no headway. Now is the time for a well told story to excite receptive people’s brains; the old ways have definitely become obsolete. Experience, imagination, new lines of thought have to be used to weave old and other, inventive means together; remember the saying – “Politics is the art of the possible,” a quote by Otto von Bismarck,..
socratic-method.com https://www.socratic-method.com › quote-meanings › otto-von-
For cynicism plus wit par excellence one turns to Groucho Marx. But further on in this excellent link are great sayings about politics. Perhaps we addicts should take one every morning with breakfast!
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/politics.html
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx
But our lives are no joke and reading about the writing of Life with Pi, I feel that there is gold in this line of thinking for us. So I invite you to read this report of the Booker Prize interviewer, if you are looking for different from the same old, same old; trying for change and depressed at our stumbling and tripping on to where!
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/life-of-pi
Writing Life of PI interview – sample:
…‘I find that we live in an age that is obsessed with facts, and that reduces everything to a kind of objectivity. Which to me is problematic. You can’t just operate on facts. It’s very diminishing of who we are. The one problem I have with science and technology is that it’s largely impersonal. If you rely too much on the objective, you start relativising your own importance.
‘I term both art and religion magical thinking. Which just means: it transforms reality in a selective way. Though it has to operate logically, of course. It has to happen in a way that does no harm to yourself or to others.’…
About the actual book ‘Life of Pi’. It is fun and fresh and might be good for your head.
The Booker Prizes https://thebookerprizes.com › the-booker-library › books › life-of-pi Life of Pi – The Booker Prizes:
Yann Martel’s warmly engaging philosophical novel is brimming with invention, ideas and playful conceits. A true modern classic. Yann Martel’s 2002 Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi is his third novel. It is narrated by Pi (Piscine) Molitor, who grows up as the son of a zoo manager in India…
Google Books
https://books.google.com › books › about › Life_of_Pi.html?id=A16NdR8h-4AC
Life of Pi: A Novel – Yann Martel – Google Books
Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction.
Willis is an appalling failure and the Nats and their cheerleaders – Laws and Garner etc, won’t admit it.
As Bernard Hickey points out, it was the Ministry of Works who built New Zealand‘s houses in the 1950s and 60s. A modified version should be resurrected and a State Advances equivalent set up as well. The problem would be entrenched interests who don’t want to see their houses depreciate. It’s about time that NZ stopped relying on the Ponzi scheme that is real estate.
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