At some stage Unions must wake up to the fact this Government means them harm

How many charter schools? David Seymour on his big ambitions

As David Seymour eyes the return of charter schools, he suggests New Zealand could be like England, where independently-run schools dominate the secondary education system.

The Associate Education Minister told Q+A there is enough funding for “up to 15” charter schools to be operational by Term 1 next year.

Seymour said these were all likely to be new — rather than state schools that have converted into charter schools — and their exact starting date would vary depending on what’s practical and getting sign-off from an Authorisation Board.

When asked how many charter schools there may eventually be, Seymour pointed to the UK’s academy schools.

“In the UK they started in 2012. Today, 12 years later, 80% of secondary schools [in England] are free schools and academies — their version of charter schools,” he said.

 

Ummmmmmmmm.

At some stage Unions must wake up to the fact this Government means them harm.

David is planning to privatise half our schools and it is a right wing experiment,ent that will cost us over $100million!

Charter schools $153m ‘experiment’ won’t deliver, union says

Key points:

Pay parity legal action has been the main go to for the Union movement in NZ, it’s easier than actually growing Union Membership and going on strike, which is fine and dandy until it’s not.

The sheer scale of the hard Right’s agenda demands a response greater than, ‘we will take you to Court’.

The policy required to win the 2026 election is going to need to be more than, ‘we will roll back all National’s roll backs’.

It must be far more visionary and strong than that.

When the Treasury Nazgûl’s are warning against free market union busting, you know the policy is a fucking nightmare!

Destroying the Fair Pay Agreements is a direct attack on working people, we are witnessing a class war with none of the political vocabulary to fight it because the middle class woke activists have sucked out all the oxygen for their identity politic virtue signals!

So what are the Unions doing.

Sigh.

This.

Broadly, there is a general consensus that working people in Aotearoa New Zealand want secure, well-paid jobs, better working conditions and fairer economic policies.

At the NZCTU, we are focused on developing a suite of policies that can be picked up by any political party that keeps the needs and voices of working people at the core.

The feedback we’ve heard so far for how we can achieve this included:

• • • Protection of pay equity
    • Need for increased flexible work arrangements
    • Calls for rent control and capital gains tax
    • Fairer taxation to address wealth disparities
    • Accessible education on employment rights
    • Housing affordability and instability as critical issues
    • Advocacy for climate action and investment in public infrastructure
    • Stronger worker participation in industry planning
    • Fostering union awareness and addressing workplace inequality.

All very worthy and good for you like vegan tofu, but zero spark, passion or vision, which I suppose for a movement that keeps getting smaller is the grim mercy of low expectations.

We face the most extreme hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government with an extremist anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-Worker, anti-Renter, anti-Beneficiary, anti-Environment agenda and the best the CTU has is ‘Reimagine Aotearoa Together’???

What are you going to fight ACT with? Cuddles snd a motion from the Hui?

Yeah.

Look, we are in real fucking danger from this extreme hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government and I’m not sure anything as toothless as this will excite anyone top defend the Left.

We need bold vision on actual policy.

We need the CTU to be demanding that the Greens, Māori Party and Labour sign up to a shared policy platform that the CTU itself develops.

The CTU should be hiring Max Harris to put together a 10 point shared policy platform that they then heavy Labour, Greens and Māori Party to adopt and then start using for the 3 to use MMP strategically the way the French Left just did in France.

We need more democratic infrastructure, we need universal union membership for every migrant worker with a 30%-70% cut in membership fees to CTU and the Migrant Unions so that every Migrant Worker is covered by a union to ensure there is zero exploitation of these migrant workers.

We need universal union membership at Universities and tertiary Institutes so that young people have an access route to politics.

We need universal left policies.

We need a new taxation structure that taxes the rich and not the poor! Financial Transaction Tax, Wealth Tax, Sugar Tax, Ghost House Tax.

We need to lower GST.

We need Renters Rights.

We need free public transport.

We need free dental.

We need the Right to Strike!

We need a national economic strategy towards total electrification from renewables and a food security infrastructure.

We need far bigger ideas and vision to bring a people together who felt betrayed by Labour’s incremental bullshit which the fucking Unions blessed and did nothing about.

Voters handed Labour an unprecedented political majority under MMP and that was squandered, so they now want to see solutions that will be forced upon the political establishment.

A wish list from a national hui seems terribly underwhelming of the challenge in front of us.

This Government represents an existential level threat to our political and economic agenda and this is the response?

Wow.

We have some way to go to get this Revolution moving Comrades.

Meanwhile, this unhinged right wing Government plunders and destroys the incremental steps Labour did manage.

 

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