4 Weeks until 2023 Election – TDB Political Battlefield analysis

This isn’t an election.

It’s a grudge fuck!

National are so smugly arrogant in their belief that the electorate hate Jacinda and Labour that they will vote any venal evil Luxon puts up.

Normally National hide their venal self interest the way you do getting your dog to take its medicine, put it in dog food.

National are so convinced they have already won the election they didn’t even bother hiding it in the dog food!

Their plan to give rich landlords $250 every fortnight in tax cuts that are funded by mutilating public transport, robbing 2 year olds of 20 hours early education funding and literally stealing from climate change budgets is an obscenity!

That venal self interest is a direct assault on the egalitarian state!

It isn’t trickle down, it’s trickle up! The poor subsidising the rich!

Rich landlords who will also gain the right to kick you out onto the street while removing the foreign buyers ban is policy that has all been paid for by the Real Estate Pimps who are donating millions to National!

Some voters are so bitter by the sacrifice Covid required that their passionate hate has ruptured against Labour who navigated NZ heroically through a once in a century pandemic with a Covid policy that saw us with the second lowest death rate in the OECD while saving 6000 lives!

Unfortunately Labour’s gutless and cowardly refusal to use a once in a generation MMP majority to actually fucking do something to reset the broken under regulated free market capitalism we have to properly resource the underfunded state by introducing new taxes aimed specifically at the mega rich was squandered!

Their incremental nothings were endless ‘great first steps’ that all amounted to jogging on the spot because the self serving Public Service and the Professional Managerial Class Consultants exploited the lack of actual reform with their own vested interests.

Meanwhile the culture wars the middle class woke identity politics activists have been dragging us into awoke the dormant political fault line of ACT who went from .7 to the double digit behemoth it is now in just 5 years.

Imagine if the woke hadn’t started all those unwinnable free speech culture wars and hadn’t alienated voters with their unforgiving puritanism and pure temple cults rather than Broadchurch solidarity?

Imagine there’s no wokeness.

It’s easy if you try.

I’m digressing.

The Right manipulate social media hate algorithms and polarise the election as ACTs crypto-fascist beatings of drug addicts, the mentally ill and beneficiaries are made quaint by the cavalcade of political circus freaks standing as candidates on NZ First’s Party List that includes nano robot activists, global conspiracy theorists and Qanon antivax nutters.

Meanwhile the worst food inflation in 30 years mugs us weekly at the Supermarket Duopoly, mortgage repayments decimate pockets and the planet is literally boiling before our eyes as war drums roll across the Pacific.

There is no depression in NZ.

Here’s the run down as TDB sees it 4 weeks out from the 2023 Election.

LABOUR: 32% 

Thankfully National’s Tax Policy and ACTs extremism and NZ First’s rabbit hole crazies are managing to make Labour’s piss weak incremental virtue signals look like stable Government.

It’s all on Chippy now.

If he manages to crucify Luxon in the debates and if National keeps dodging the Foreign Buyers Tax fiasco, voters will be forced to reconsider their vote.

The difference between Chippy and Luxon is Chippy is likeable where as Luxon wants you to like him.

The only antidote to Labour’s gutless incremental political cowardice is John Tamihere negotiating a Supply and Confidence arrangement that makes some huge wins for progressive policy as opposed to the confused hug fest the Greens would hui on for 6 months over.

NATIONAL: 33%

You can not watch any interview with Luxon and not see it for the stiff talking point CEO power point presentation that it is. He is hopeless in interviews, he sticks to the script and just assumes you will accept the answer because he’s the boss.

But that’s not how politics works and it comes across as undeserved smugness.

National’s venal tax policy that is a direct affront to Egalitarianism by robbing the poor to pay the rich is so bad and the bullshit Foreign Buyers Tax debate so belittling, it can’t but hurt National.

Luckily for National, the NZ Media are a joke and they stalled hook line and sinker National’s master stroke.

Rather than scream, ‘why the Christ are you removing the Foreign Buyers Ban’, we are debating whether or not National’s stupid plan will raise enough tax!

See how the interests of the Real Estate Pimps who are donating millions to National are elevated above our own?

National will only get worse as time goes by.

Luxon is one interview away from snapping at the Journalist and then it’s over rover.

ACT: 15% + 2 Electorates

ACTs members are so feral and crazy that they attacked the NZ Media at the ACT Party Conference in Auckland over the weekend.

They are cross burning banjo twanging redneck gun loving Kiwis who hate the ‘Plandemic’ media and ain’t afraid to push journalists and intimidate them because that’s what cross burning banjo twanging redneck gun loving Kiwis who hate the ‘Plandemic’ media do!

Targeting drug addicts and the mentally ill is so on brand for ACTs petty fascism, what the play is privatisation of welfare.

Private welfare companies will be brought in to take contracts and they get bonuses from either transitioning the mentally ill and drug addicts into work or cut them off welfare altogether for breaking some bullshit rule they invent.

This is welfare privatisation using drug addicts and the mentally ill as the punching bag.

Once established they will come after solo parents, the unemployed and the disabled with the same cruelty.

This is where we are in the election cycle right now, beating up on drug addicts and the mentally ill.

This isn’t a welfare policy, it’s a fucking right wing revenge fantasy!

GREENS: 11% + 2 electorates

The Greens have finally found a winning strategy. Be slightly less gutless than Labour and hoover up all the disgusted Labour Left vote. Good for 11% and Auckland Central.

Aside from the best political interview of the election to date by Rebecca Wright, NewsHub Nation had an exclusive on Wellington Central where the vacuum left by James and Grant has led to the possibility of the National Party candidate slipping through the middle between Green ambition and Labour Smugness.

Chloe came from behind in the exact same scenario in Auckland Central so it’s not impossible for the Greens to pull off a win here, but there must be some question over why James stood down because if he had stayed he would have taken out a Labour backbencher.

It was always a gamble for James to virtue signal here by standing aside and it may be a virtue signal that blows the Greens best chance of winning Wellington Central.

Good to see the brains trust of the Green Strategy Team strike again.

Māori Party – 3.9% + 4 electorates

The true demarcation of power in a liberal progressive democracy is between the 1% richest + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us.

The richest protect their wealth from any new taxes and our social and physical infrastructure suffers.

The political project of the Right is to starve the State of revenue so there is nothing to redistribute in the first place.

The Māori Party identify this and have put together a Tax Policy that is as close to Socialism as we are going to get!

Tax rates

Currently the top tax rate – for earnings over $180,000 – is 39%.

The party would also:

And introduce:

Labour is here to manage under regulated capitalism (and let the free market do the rest), the Greens are here to try and add the cost of pollution into the price (and let the free market do the rest) while the Māori Party are actually here to disrupt capitalism!

Right now in NZ we have 25 000 people on the social housing wait list, we spend $1million per day Kettling beneficiaries into unsafe motels, barely 50% of our students were regularly attending class in term 1, Home ownership is at its lowest rate in 70 years, there are 200 000 children in poverty, 55% of Kiwis are struggling financially, we are facing the worst food inflation for 30 years,  there’s 100 000 homeless and the planet is melting before our eyes!

Normally the wealthy can rely on the fecklessness of the Greens or the cowardice of Labour to do nothing meaningful on Tax Policy, but John Tamihere is a heavy hitting working class boyver boy who is going to make Chippy tax the rich!

Left Wing Pakeha have every reason to vote for Māori Party Tax Policy this election.

NZF – 4.5%

Māori are ‘not indigenous’, Winston Peters claims

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters made the claim that Māori are “not indigenous” while speaking at a public meeting in Nelson on Sunday.

“Here’s the rub if you are Māori. We’re not indigenous,” Peters told his supporters.

“We come from Hawai-iki. Where’s our Hawai-iki? We think it is in the Cook Islands. We think it’s in Rarotonga … but we’re not from here. And you go back 5000 years, we came with our DNA from China. Not like 55,000 years in Australia.”

Asked after the meeting by Stuff if he could see that that view might be upsetting to some, Peters referred to it as “the truth”.

Wow.

“Māori ain’t indigenous because they only came to New Zealand 800 years ago as opposed to 50 000???

What level of chicanery, fat-bloke-down-pub level nuttiness is this?

First of all, of course Māori are indigenous to NZ FFS.

Where the fuck are they supposed to be indigenous to?

Hawai-iki? Did he really say that?

Look, this Winston is a very different cat to the one we knew and loved.

His dependence on the conspiracy theory vote and the dawning realisation they aren’t actually nearly enough to guarantee his return to Parliament is forcing him to make these types of outrageous claims on Race in a desperate bid to stay over the 5% threshold.

NZ First should be 8% They are hovering around 5%.

The crazier the Voices for Freedom get and the more power they take over of the structures inside NZ First to push their candidates up the list, the more alienating they become.

Having candidates who believe there are nano robots in vaccines is a bad look and Kiwis aren’t that conspiratorial.

They are however racist and Winston is throwing this raw meat out into the election because his antivax lunatics are turning away as many voters as they recruit and that keeps pushing his vote around and might fail him on the night.

Inflammatory race baiting in a political landscape this frayed and angry is a dereliction of duty in terms of political leadership and shows that Winston will literally say any hateful shit he thinks might win him enough votes so that he can once again hold the country to hostage for his knighthood.

Hateful shit like this from the lips of one of the most prominent Māori Politicians of our age dishonours Peter’s mana, Māori mana and New Zealanders mana.

His hateful, spiteful, malicious comments, thrown out purely for the celebration of bigotry and the harvest of demeaning toxicity, are a sad gasp of desperation from a Political movement that started with New Zealand First and ended with White Supremacy Last.

Winston is the brown politician European New Zealanders can love to champion because he says the racism they can’t.

What a deformed blight on a chequered career.

Sub 5% Feral Antivax God Squad vote – NOTHING!

What’s interesting looking at the TU Curia Polling is how little support for antivax extremists there really is. We have thought they were some shadow electorate with real clout, when the truth looks like they are radicalised loners who are shrill with little real electorate support.

The Economy

The domestic Chinese property crisis alongside the flawed Covid opening alongside the extreme climate events alongside the rising unemployment alongside a crashing economy are terribly problematic for NZ because we are so exposed to China.

National under John Key sold NZ a ‘all our cows in one Beijing Paddock’ strategy  and unfortunately we handed our cows over cheaply to China and they have grown their own massive new dairy farms.

This is a fundamental shock to the model big Dairy have sold NZ for 20 years and it’s going to explode next month.

The problem is that as an autocratic leader, Xi sees his interests as China’s interests. An economic recession would be disastrous to those interests making the need for a nationalistic flag waving invasion of Taiwan islands or blockade the type of play left.

Grant has saved the PREFU from a total collapse.

China’s slow down has impacted revenue which has impacted tax take but thanks to cleaver accounting tricks and and enormous amount of hope, we won’t have financial armageddon.

Grant has steadied the ship enough to make bold claims that the Right can’t undermine.

Yes Labour borrowed a huge amount of money to save 6000 lives over Covid, but the resilience saving those lives has meant the economy has stabilised.

It’s a remarkable achievement for Labour, but for many it will still feel like armageddon.

Food inflation is still ‘sticky’ we are very open to new global shockwaves and Banks are threatening another

Thanks to mass immigration, rebuilding from catastrophic climate change events and the Housing Ponzi scheme, the NZ Economy lives for another day.

1 more geopolitical shock, earthquake or climate  event however and we are really fucked.

PREDICTION: 

The wealthy, the billionaire Class and the richest 1% have donated $12million to ACT and National since 2021 and they are getting their money’s worth.

The anger many feel towards Labour post-Covid means National and ACT can stand any policy up and barely anyone will scrutinise it in their rush to punish Labour for every sad thing that has happened to them since Covid.

We are all now as unforgiving as the woke.

Because we are hate voting this election, we are going to accidentally elect the most far right Government since Roget Douglas.

I say accidentally because I suspect the vast number of voters who voted Labour in 2020 and who are now voting National or ACT have very little idea what their policies are, they just want to say ‘Fuck you’ to Labour.

National have promised to give rich Landlords a $250 fortnight tax cut funded by stealing from 2 year olds, mutilating public transport and literally stealing from the climate change fund.

The obscenity of this turns to farce when you consider the foreign buyers tax won’t generate anything close to what National claim it will!

Normally National have to hide their blatant self interest the way you trick a dog into taking its pills by hiding it in something tasty, but National are so convinced that hatred of Labour is all they need, they haven’t even pretended to dress the venality of their tax cut for the rich funded by the poor as anything more than it is.

Which it isn’t.

It’s active state sanctioned vandalism of the egalitarian society.

Orgy of Privatisation and Crony Capitalism: 

You know the only winners in National’s road, road, roads policy?

The oil companies.

By moving away from petrol charges to miles driven, National hand the petrol companies a huge win and when you consider the early signals of the vast crony capitalism National are about to embark upon…

…we face an orgy of privatisation and crony capitalism!

Dr Bryce Edwards devastating critique into who is donating to National and the disgusting level of self interest is remarkable and shocking!

Alongside this orgy, National are lining up Public Private Partnership scams, removing foreign buyer bans and opening the immigration floodgates.

National’s only economic plan is to open the country to foreign buyers, slash the State and privatise the rest.

The Crony Capitalism National will unleash will make Labour’s sins look childish in comparison.

National will hack at the State to carve out deals for their mates while ACT will hack at the State for ideological purity.

The number 4 on ACTs Party List, that pale faced former Pharmaceutical Pimp Candidate. The steam off a sadists glasses vibe guy, the sort of person who would be found with an unexplainably large amount of children shoes, him – tell me that guy ain’t there to privatise Pharmac for his former industry?

Union Busting:

National and ACT will dump the Fair Pay Agreements and give Bosses the right to fire before 90 days.

This is a direct assault on the Union Movement and empowers the low wage economy National donors have become addicted to.

Expect migrant worker exploitation to explode throw the roof.

Class War on Renters:

Real Estate Pimps have donated millions to National and in return National have lifted the Foreign Buyers Ban and will give landlords the right to kick tenants out with no notice. National and ACT will also role back Tenants rights while reopening Landlord tax loop holes.

There is a class war on renters but we don’t have the political vocabulary to articulate it.

Speculators Paradise: 

By opening NZ up to foreign speculators while reopening landlord tax loops holes, National and ACT are opening NZ up for sale to their overseas wealthy mates.

Environmental Bonfire of the Vanities:

National and ACT will reverse oil and gas bans and steam full ahead at the Climate Change Iceberg. They will allow Agriculture another 5 years of doing nothing (that will be a total of 25 years of doing nothing) while slashing public transport and climate change budgets.

They will greenwash everything and lie about the rest.

The planet will burn and National and ACT will pour petrol on it.

Amputation of the State:

National and ACT have promised 14 000 job cuts and the amputation of 5 ministries and the Human Rights Commission. They will slash and burn the State and hack away at it with the ideological fervour of self-flagellating puritans.

Race War:

As a bottom line, ACT are demanding a referendum to renegotiate the Treaty with Māori and then just foist that upon Māoridom!

What in our 184 year history makes anyone believe that Māori will just accept that?

This referendum will generate an enormous social backlash and the hikoi to Wellington will become our largest protest march. Parliament Lawns will be Occupied, the real possibility of civil disobedience will erupt and all because ACT want to play race baiting games unleashing the worst angels of our nature.

Gun Fetishist Fantasies: 

The Gun lobby have deep control over ACT now and the killing off of the Gun Registry (an act the Police Association says is crazy, which really is saying something coming from the Police Association), and allowing the sociopaths submachine gun of choice back on the streets is truly the foreplay of a charmless man.

Private Prison Empire and Prison Riot:

National are promising to throw State Tenants onto the street while ACT promise a billion dollars to build more prisons!

You know the ‘Private prison’ solution is around the corner.

Our current publicly funded prisons are close to snapping point and the incompetence of technology and staffing of the home monitoring system that can be tricked by fucking tin foil are all red flags that the system can’t manage the prison popualtyioin they have, let alone pouring thousands more into it!

The recipe for an enormous prison riot is building.

The only counter to this madness is a Labour/Green Minority Government with a Supply and Confidence arrangement with Maori Party that will force through the radical reforms we need to adapt to the climate change and rebuild an egalitarian community post covid.

There are 3 basic motivators in politics.

Fear.

Anger.

Hope.

National, ACT and NZ First are attempting to harness anger.

The post Covid world is bitter and furious at everyone and everything.

Social media hate algorithms have generated a debate of piss and vinegar and an unhinged rage has settled on parts of the electorate that borders on openly psychotic.

For National, ACT and NZ First – Māori’s get too much, Covid was just a flu and saving 6000 lives wasn’t worth the lockdown.

Labour and Greens are attempting to harness fear.

Fear of how far right ACT and National are and how extremist NZ First are.

ACT want guns back on the streets while amputating the State, National want to give rich landlords tax cuts funded by robbing 2 year olds, mutilating Public Transport and stealing from climate change budgets while NZ First want toilet police to check genders in public bathrooms and has a candidate who thinks there are nano robots in the vaccine.

This extremist cavalcade of political circus freaks would unleash a level of right wing policy not seen since Roger Douglas.

This election is between anger and fear.

Anger at what Labour/Greens did or didn’t do vs the Fear of what ACT, National and NZ First will do.

As for Hope, it has been strangled and dumped in a polluted river this election.

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