An ACT/National Government would be the most extreme right wing experiment since Roger Douglas
I don’t believe for one second that the vast majority of Kiwis have any true comprehension of just how radical a National/ACT Government would truly be.
Many who voted Labour in 2020 have soured over the lack of transformative change combining with post Covid bitterness and are angry at Jacinda without truly appreciating what voting for National will entail.
If it’s a National/ACT Government, it will be Seymour calling the shots.
The quick yellow fox will jump all over the lazy blue log and David Seymour will get all his crazy policy passed without Luxon caring.
- Māori going to the Waitangi Tribunal over cancellation of 3 waters: The moment the National/ACT Government scrap 3 Waters, Māoridom will go straight back to the Waitangi Tribunal, win the Court Case and force Luxon into his own Helen Clark moment and force him to pass law to simply confiscate the water. This will cause an enormous eruption of violent protest as tens of thousands of Māori will embark upon a hiko to Wellington to protest ACTs amputation of the Ministry of Māori affairs. They will attempt an occupation of Parliament’s lawns and the country will hold its breath.
- Mass immigration: National will simply implement John Key’s pump and dump policy of open door immigration to inflate growth rates while causing enormous stress on the groaning underfunded infrastructure and send rents soaring. This will cause enormous social dislocation and a rise in race relation tensions.
- Expansion of Oranga Tamariki Big Data Experiment: National created the Oranga Tamariki Frankenstein and wants more welfare decided by algorithm as a means to de-invest welfare. Luxon has already championed this model.
- Mass Dairy intensification: It’s all National have as an economic policy.
- Mass Property Speculation: They will remove any of the bare tinkering Labour did and help the speculators spin prices higher.
- Mutilation of the State: ACT are serious about wanting to amputate the Ministry for Women, Youth, Māori, Pacific People and Ethnic Communities while slashing the Human Rights Commission. The resulting Public Service strikes will gridlock Wellington. If there’s one thing the Public Service can do well, it is protesting for their own interests.
- War on Crime: Expect the paramilitary police expansion to occur quickly with a whole dump of new civil liberty breaching powers to supposedly keep us safe but will almost immediately be abused as they increasingly get used on the protesting Left.
- Prison riot and explosion in numbers: The war on crime will see far more in prison and National prefers puritan counter productive prisons so expect them to be crammed full and explode in a seething chain reaction of prison riots once National grant Corrections new powers to beat prisoners with. Corrections are very corrupt and once they gain new powers to bash prisoners with, they’ll be some prisoner who gets beaten within an inch of his life which that will trigger prison riots.
- Rise of more Mass Surveillance & Political violence: The protests such a radical agenda creates will demand the State turn its attention back on the Left while National supporters clutch their pearls appalled at the aggression the Left are protesting with and rally around Luxon rather than criticise the policy. They will call on Luxon to spy on the radical lefties.
- Higher Government Debt: Luxon is no free marketeer, he believes he has 7 properties because Jesus loves him, if debt goes up to pay for the extra prisons, extra Police, extra dairy intensification, extra welfare experiments, extra fake growth, then so be it, he doesn’t care. Oh David Seymour will hate it, but he’ll be so fat and full on his amputation of 6 State agencies that he’ll only be able to mount a burp as a protest. Fat vultures tend to be the most dangerous.
We have lived through a political period of time since MMP that has managed to dilute and temper the idealogical extremes of Left/Right politics in NZ. The need to compromise and pull punches is fundamental to the MMP dynamic HOWEVER that completely gets thrown out the window if there is no political centre left.
The political centre has been hollowed out so much under MMP that Labour and National are almost indistinguishable in their acquiescence to neoliberal mantra.
The far left and far right have enormous pent up political tension that will rupture once Labour or National are dependent on their numbers for a majority.
ACT’s rise is fuelling a toxic polarisation of politics.
The naked hypocrisy of the right to twist ‘One person One Vote’ into a negative egalitarian garrotte around the throat of Democracy while screaming ‘we-are-saving-democracy’ is performative art for Fascists.
Because MMP has always brought in moderating forces like NZ First, the pent up political expression of the Right and the Left has been building for almost a quarter of a century and will finally be expressed this year and with the amplification of anger will result in an election that will see resentment whichever side wins.
When you dog whistle up the worst angels of our nature by manufacturing existential threats to democracy, you generate a confrontation that you are ultimately responsible for.
I think the Conflict Policies of a National/ACT Government would be disastrous for this country.
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A more immediate problem may be Labour, unlike world governments, refusing to exercise any sort of caution concerning overseas visitors bringing further covid strains into New Zealand. Statistically, this would effect mainly older folk, and bumping a reasonable bunch of them off would save pots of money, but every now and then promising young persons, and much need persons get afflicted too and families and lives are shattered.
Labour’s attempt to clamp down upon freedom of speech has also only been put into abeyance, and hangs like the sword of Damocles over democracy in New Zealand. The PM herself advocated global censorship of free speech to the UNO, describing it as a weapon of destruction.
And what about the children ? Labour is the one party hell-bent on annihilating the Commissioner for Children who is the one bulwark against the damage of the ubiquitous algorithm and the damage of a crappy education system and a run-down health service and the big people who batter, abuse, kill and maim very much smaller humans in such world-leading numbers. It seems to me that a government which fails to protect its most vulnerable wee citizens has very peculiar priorities indeed.
It’s a worry @Snow White. My suspicions are that you’re a lifetime ‘leftie’, as am I. I just can’t see my way clear to flick Labour a vote at the next erection. It’s too bloody late – especially after the incredible mandate they were given last time in an MMP environment
The lack of imagination; the adherence to media and marketing mantras; commitment to neo-liberalism (even if it is dressed up as only 3rd-wayism); the bullshit spin, the “faith” in “officials” that have a fairly obvious agenda (status quo among other things) – the excusing of really really unbelievable fuckups and incompetence in the senior ranks. Some of it is unbelievable.
I’ve always tried to make allowances for JA – given Her background – she’s genuine and with good intention.
You have to make allowances for the era in which she grew up in, and the ideology she’s studied (and excelled in).
Don’t get me started on Grant too! He’s even worse unfortunately, reliant on cheerleaders [not looking at you @ Bert] who claim leftist credentials, but who in many cases are absolute SLEEZES.
The mandate Labour were given in2020 in an MMP environment, and DESPITE covid, their record of achievement is just bloody pathetic.
I’m sincerely hoping they pull something out of the bag after the holiday break, but I suspect they’ve well and truly fucked it, and it’ll take 3 years of the Right Wing alternative for the electorate and leftist politicians to wake the fuck up.
I’m wondering whether this could mean that we in suburbia watch every house sale in consternation in case one of Key’s mates buys them and turns them into brothels. The parking’s bad enough already, and the prospect of drunken sports teams or pathetic incels knocking at wrong doors and worrying little children and women home alone is something we don’t need. Ambulances in the night. It happens.
I think even National, despite all their usual bluster, know that ACTs ideas are problematic. That’s why you already have Seymour saying that there is little difference between National and Labour when it comes to actually governing.
Nah. Not saying you are entirely wrong, but I do believe Seymour when he insists this country must have a voice on co-governance, which no other politician but Winston has the guts to say. This is an EMERGENCY!
The vast majority of Kiwis are politically ignorant.
They will vote whichever way the constant relentless subliminal messaging on every media outlet is telling them to vote.
I hear people unconsciously parroting what the sycophantic media spout forth on a daily/ nightly basis.
Critical thinking is out the window! And that is a dangerous place to be.
Seymour and Luxon aren’t smart. Just stupid , ignorant, unsophisticated knee jerkers.
I agree and that is why they voted for a nice smile in 2017 and took no notice of their lack of a real plan. They did not expect to win and the next 5 years have shown their lack of good ideas and ministers to apply them. They were lucky when covid came along and they did a first rate job of handling the immediate crisis but now the gloss is fading and along with it the smile .
OMDB Some refer to Christopher Luxon, former ‘runner of an airline’ and now infamous eggheaded owner of multiple ‘investment’ properties, as the ‘second coming’. (Being a lady, I won’t elaborate on that) All he knows is sales – like Key before him – although he doesn’t quite have the #StreetSmarts of Mr chowKey, now a proud purveyor of the business of the flesh – and his objective is ‘to get more bums on seats’. The problem is, that coupled with the incel, those ‘bums aka bottom feeders’ may only ever get ‘seats’ – if they are lucky. However, I have observed so many malcontents, so many ingrates who would rather call for Jacinda Ardern’s head than ever comply with common sense requirements which could have resulted in NZ quashing the horrid COVID. It is acknowledged that nobody really knows the scope of the virus which, like the pimples Luxon had whilst at King’s College, keeps on keeping on, so nobody can say when it will be over. Nobody – especially not National’s media cheerleaders. tbc
Jealousy is driving all this anti-CL sentiment.
Chris Luxon is beyond reproach.
He speaks his mind, which sometimes gets him offside with the Beltway Political elites.
Time for a man of the people, like John Key did, to run this country for hard-working New Zealanders, rather than for beneficiaries and those bottom-feeders that don’t want to work for a living.
There are only 3.5% unemployed, ( or those whose employment is ram-raiding and thieving).
That means that 96.5% of the working population of New Zealand deserve to be rewarded for their hard-work, not the govt using IRD taxes to pay for bollards, or confiscating fresh water from councils, so they can be passed on to the Waitangi Tribunal.
Let’s see who gets a better reception at Waitangi celebrations this year shall we Martin – that should show you the will of the people (after noon)
So many lies in there, I’ll leave it at that.
Or the sentiment could be driven by the constant “clarifications” to what he really meant to say. Throw in evangelical Christian and there is enough to say ‘thanks but no thanks’ when itt try comes to being PM.
I think you meant to say John Key was a man of the people….’s congress of the PRC.
Let’s just carry on with appalling under threat of: it would be worse if…..
How’s that working out for escaping the neo-liberal choker-chain around our necks?
Moving into harder and harder times with any chance of a genuine move to the left throttled?
Why do you think people are so angry at Labour?
It seems that after watching reading listening to all that is happening in NZ and the sort of political system we have here that nat/Act et al would grimly go on their way decimating everything that most people hold dear, including affecting their own supporters who are either venal or determinedly ignorant. It also seems to me that those of goodwill in NZ may have to be like the boy in Holland who stemmed a leak in the dyke and had to stay holding the trickle at bay until someone could bring effective help.
I think we need to be careful this year about what we say about Jacinda and Labour; praise the good and demonstrate how the bad could be improved. Deflect the criticism fairly, onto poor administration, knowing that it is a truism in social policy that good well-intentioned and practical, new policies can be mutated by administration and poorly applied to a malign result far from the earlier intentions.
It still strikes me as very strange that Norman Kirk (our one time prime minister FFS) would say something as ridiculous, simplistic and childish as that attempt at describing the wants, needs and motivations of humanity. Perhaps his 14 year old grandkid said it.
The words Norm actually used were:
“Basically there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for.”
I know because Norm said them to me when I interviewed him when leader of the opposition in 1969 for the NZBC. The misquote is pale beside the original.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/01-08-2020/the-famous-words-that-norman-kirk-did-not-say
I have been reading Catherine Cookson who particularly wrote about the north English poor
around Jarrow with poor education, few opportunities, who would have understood Norm Kirk’s ideas. Those who think his ideas do not encompass enough seem on a higher plane above the basics of life that are actually necessities. In NZ jobs were snatched away by competition and the economy upended like a Monopoly board; but real life pawns still have living needs. So it’s a sweeping statement that Kirk was talking through his hat. I reply with part of a Pam Ayre’s poem about Starlings:
So the next time you comes out to sprinkle the crumbs out,
And there’s starlings there, making a noise,
Don’t you be so quick to heave half a brick,
It’s the misses, meself and the boys!
https://community.rspb.org.uk/chat/f/poetry-corner/46316/we-re-starlings-
Thanks Grey.
Sure, there’s no disputing the necessity and value of those things, even someone in prison is granted at least those. It’s the reductionism that grates.
Humans are the most complex thing in the universe (as far as we know) – look the hell out when that complexity is arbitrarily reduced to the sort of simplistic nonsense that Big Norm spouted. If history is any guide it’s often an excuse for the imposition some absurd, unworkable and downright dangerous solution to problems they don’t understand.
I’m very fearful.
Neoliberalism has reduced a once decent society to a penniless carcass.
Act and National are going to burn or sell the bones.
MB frets about the an imagined “extreme right-wing experiment” while ignoring the fact that our current government is hell-bent on subverting democracy.
Clearly things will have to get much worse before large numbers of people will wake up and begin to fight for their own interests.
Rising strike action internationally could be a good sign.
It isn’t often that farmers are angry enough to protest, but now the worker-farmer alliance may finally rise from its century-long slumber.
It is highly unlikely that major change will occur until the two main parties are swept away and replaced, however. They are simply too corrupt to be saved.
Go on Vote National!
I know you all want to.
A far right wet dream.
What urks me is that when Nact sell the last of the silver wear to their donors/handlers ( health . water and the air we breath ) a future govt with a conscience will be unable to renationalise due to the small print in these pesky trade agreements . To do so would in effect be a declaration of war against some of the biggest globalist corporations in existence . I fear for our grand childrens future if these venal ticket clippers ever get back in .