It was sad reading Stephen Hickson’s defence of capitalism in the Press (25 October 2017). Sad because capitalism has delivered so much outright misery to so much of humanity over the last 300 years that it’s hard to believe anyone could be so blinkered.
It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.
There are some encouraging signs this Labour-led government will not be a “pledge-card” government. If it can develop and maintain programmes of change across housing, health, welfare, the environment, employment rights etc then while it will never be a revolutionary government, it could be a transformational government.
The most interesting aspect of Winston Peter’s announcement of a coalition deal with Labour was his acknowledgement that capitalism had become the enemy of so many people. He said he wants a government of change which, among other things, will do something real about poverty.
On the 10th anniversary of the Urewera raids we should recount the lessons – and we should remember. Breathless police and media commentary about a cocktail of napalm bombs, terrorist cells, guns, ammunition, Maori extremists, guerrilla warfare, assassination threats against politicians, greeted the public on the 15th October 2007. You name it – the police claimed it and the media hyped it.
It would be much more appropriate for New Zealand to scrap ANZAC DAY (25 April – dated for the landing at Gallipoli in World War I) and shift our national remembrance of war to 12 July – the day in 1863 that imperial troops crossed the Mangatawhiri River and the great war for New Zealand began.
The vilest incident of the campaign was not red-neck farmers protesting their right to pollute and degrade our waterways at our expense. It didn’t even involve the National Party directly. It was the vile, despicable, media-run campaign to denigrate Green MP Metiria Turei and drive her from the co-leadership of the party.
Voting involves a moral choice.
In a capitalist economy you either vote with capitalism’s winners or with the losers. With those who have used the system to enrich themselves at the expense of others or those forced to struggle at the margins.
Unless progressive voters maximise Green Party support. In the current political situation only the Green Party has a realistic chance of dragging the neo-liberal Labour Party significantly to the left in a post-election government. Without the Greens Labour will tinker here and tinker there while leaving the free market to run a country bitterly divided by poverty and inequality.
I’m not sure how widespread it is for government ministers to refuse attendance at public meetings when they are asked to front for unpopular policies but in the case of Minister of Social Housing Amy Adams it is certainly true.