How and Why the NZ Right are beating the NZ Left
The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services has released a new report last week, which shows that 10.2 percent of the population experiencing relative income poverty, Māori unemployment is 11%, Māori youth unemployment is 19%, 51 percent of Māori households experience moderate to severe food insecurity and 16.5% of the total population are living in relative income poverty after housing costs.
That’s over 860 000 Kiwis living in poverty.
So why the fuck is the next election down to the wire?
When the economy is haemorrhaging DIRECTLY BECAUSE OF GOVERNMENT POLICY, why is the election so close?
Why can’t the Left win voters back to our side?
There are a couple of reasons:
The Left have lost male voters: Thanks to our beloved Middle Class Woke activists, they have turned identity politics into a vast cultural backlash. The damage their cancel culture social media Lynch mobs caused between 2016-2020 have generated a level of resentment altho has become political. TDB has argued and warned that you don’t want men seeing themselves as an identity, you want them to stand in solidarity via citizenship and class, the millisecond they adopt the grievance of the Woke, you lose them to the reactionary right. If the Left can not win men back, we lose the election.
The mainstream media is completely weighted against the Left now: Stuff and NZME are now utterly dominated by Right wing pundits and voices, there are a few exceptions but the majority are now foaming right wing voices. There is not even the pretence of ‘balance’ meaning the Left are never given the space in corporate media to make their case.
The Left have no infrastructure: Look at how the Right have built a strong infrastructure that connects corporate dark money to right wing influencers and media amplification…
…take the Free Speech Union as an example.
Who Benefits: The rise and rise of the Free Speech Union
The union’s critics say its veneer of reasonableness hides a darker mission of knocking institutions, sowing the seeds of racial division, and importing culture wars on issues like transgender rights.
Some, like University of Auckland academics Sereana Naepi and Peter Davis, say a free speech “crisis” at universities has been manufactured – and amplified by like-minded groups, like the NZ Initiative.
…I have always felt that Free Speech Union was a Zionist front group that weaponised free speech for right wing purposes.
It is part of the Taxpayers’ Union stable of clients and is an important mouthpiece for the wealthy and powerful.
The irony is that it would never have come about if woke middle class identity politics acolytes hadn’t decided to start a culture war on free speech.
Good one wokies.
The reality is that the astroturf constellation of Taxpayers’ Union, Free Speech Union, The Campaign Company, Groundswell, Federated Farmers, The NZ Initiative, The Atlas Network, Business NZ etc etc etc are all having enormous success at pushing for corporate interests while distracting with culture war talking points.
Kiwis are having their petty bigotries manipulated by these astroturf organisations to advance corporate interests.
Take the last local elections, Dr Bryce Edwards makes the following point…
…the issue isn’t that the right are using dark money to run influence campaigns and winning, the issue is why the hell can’t the Left counter that influence?
How does NZ Left beat influence of astroturf Taxpayers’ Union/NZ Initiative stable of clients?
The problem is that while the right all hate each other, they put that aside to work for their masters.
On the Left, we are far too focused on attacking each other.
On the Right they search for recruits, on the Left we search for traitors.
This has become a real issue for the Left because the next generation don”t see themselves as a class or as citizens, they see themselves as hashtag identities and the woke infiltration of many Left wing groups (as seen most tragically in 2021 when Auckland Students Against Climate Change cancelled themselves for being too racist) has ended up with a brittle dispirit group of Wellington based groups that are still on talking terms with each other.
The current ‘unity’ on the Left is like a threesome that goes bad.
Hilariously when you speak with Left Wing Generals in private, they all acknowledge that the woke cancel culture of 2016-2020 has left us decimated to the extremes of the reactionary anti-woke right.
I believe there is infrastructure within the NZ Left that could be harnessed in time for the election to act as a counter weight to the Right’s astroturf influencers, it is finding the will to make then Left work together.
We need to build a group of think tanks and support their work through amplification that goes beyond Action Stations list of approved Wellington friend group.
THINK TANKS
In this area, we desperately require real intellectual weight to argue for Left Universalism and capitalist critiques.
The Helen Clark Foundation – The amazing work Helen’s Foundation does and the issues they raise mark her Foundation as one of the best think tanks we have.
Dr Bryce Edwards – Bryce has probably had the best insights into the influence of the right wing astro turf organisations.
Greenpeace – Continue to be the best critic of the Government’s denial of climate change.
NZCTU – They have the money to fund research and step up as leaders.
AMPLIFIERS:
There has to be an acknowledgment that if we are to win the next election, it has to go beyond Action Stations rainbow of the approved Wellington friend group association.
Against the Current, Nick Rockell, Gerard Otto + BHN – All important voices on the Left that need to be patched into this flow of info from the think tanks for distribution online.
Māori Media – Waatea has built their Facebook page to 110 000, Māori media are doing better at building influence than most of the mainstream media.
Political Party social media – They need to step in here as well and promote wider content that isn’t just party based.
Spinoff – Scoop is dead, which is a problem because their press release section once mattered. The Spinoff has social media muscle and they should become the new place for all press releases for the Left.
If the Left doesn’t work to build a counter weight to the right wing astroturf organisations, we can’t win hearts and minds.
Independent Media is more important than ever, especially in the lead up to the Election. TDB is the largest Left Wing Blog in NZ and we have been operating for 13 years now. We get zero funding g from NZ on Air and we don’t have no rich backers. If you can donate please do so here or directly into our account – 12-3065-0133561-56
Chippy should have gone ages ago. We kept saying it and no-one in Labour thought it was important. He has a lot of valuable background knowledge but he doesn’t interest voters. He’s only winning the favoured PM vote because Luxon is soooooooooo awful.
That was Andrew Little’s problem. Just plain boring.
I’m loath to use the word ‘charisma’ because I don’t think you should need charisma to show you are definitely a good choice. Your enthusiasm, commitment and grasp of the situation ought to shine through. Chippy just sends everyone to sleep.
At a time when the whole country is quietly dying, the perps ought not to have a leg to stand on. There should be a lot of loud protest and the best we have is this lackluster man who seems tired and worn out.
All good points.
The elephant in the room are neoliberals with red ties.
Hipkins won’t commit to anything the Green propose that would harm Hipkins business friendly approach.
No one wonder the right wing are dominating when the main opposition party in reality supports the economic status quo.
Yesterday the Greens announced a significant election policy: default union membership. New employees would automatically be enrolled in a “default union”, but would be able to opt out. Unions approved, of course, but what did Labour, the supposed party of the union movement think about it?
Yes, they were “non-committal”. The same way they’re “non-committal” about anything actually left-wing these days (when they’re not actively hostile to it, like taxing the rich).
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/07/eating-labours-lunch.html
Despite all the money being firehosed at the right…despite all the soft cock interviews, or non existent interviews in the case of Luxon, that the right are favoured with , despite Hosking’s continuous endless woeful sycophancy towards the right …..despite Luxon having a social media team of 7….despite all this… National is polling at 28% and ACT are around 6.8%…. both catastrophically down since the election.
Jack Tame is the only one carrying out impartial interviews on Q&A.
When Nikki -No -Boats -Willis decided to front for a Q&A interview it was an absolute trainwreck and glaringly exposed the reason why National cowardly run for cover all the time.
She was dreadful and graphically served to highlight the shallow tenuous frailty of right wing beliefs and right wing economic and social policy incompetence.
They have no answers…zero
The Left have virtually no money compared to the right but are continually fronting… all the time …and staying on task and message….normal people like that…consistency….turning up …not running….They don’t like bullshit artists and cowards.
The right are basically a bunch of immoral con artists ….their game is over…they are on the way out!
The right always have the advantage of having a heap more money than the left thanks to their wealthy corporate donors and sponsorship of the Atlas Network.
Great question! It’s only down to the wire because our deceitful media keep telling us all that is the case – it’s called BRAINWASHING and our media and this CoC are all over it. However it could easily backfire on them so fingers crossed! The RW in NZ is corrupt, dishonest, full of egotistical bullies and has limitless funds from those without principles, values or integrity – just the need for more and more money! So anyone who votes for these 3 x CoC-up parties deserves the same government we currently have which will destroy NZ, there is no doubt about that! Hipkins will show his mettle when the debates start as Luxon will try to weasel out of many since he hasn’t got a clue – he’s simply a large bag of wind – similar to Shane Jones. Seymour will come across as “out of touch with reality”, while Winston, as completely desperate to tick his last box, that of PM! So all Lefties, ensure your friends/rellies enrol, VOTE and then we can get on with saving NZ. It’s difficult to believe NZ has so many greedy, horrible, dishonest and racial dissenters! Time for a complete reset!
Hipkins has no mettle to show and Labour has little to offer the voting public to grab their vote. Labour has not learnt from last time and just hope giving us back some of our money will make them winners. The prospect of Labour get power sharing with Greens and TPM is a further turnoff. In UK Green run councils are out of control with bassar regulations. I am not against Labour as such and voted twice for Heen Clark who ran a good ship that helped businesses and those in need it is the current form of the party I object to and while I have gripes with some coalition moves and personnel they are on the right track in advancing the country for everybody
There is no evidence of that whatsoever….Unemployment when Labour left office was 3.6 %…
Now under The Coalition…5.3% and would be way higher if it wasn’t for the mass
exodus of over 200,000 to Australia .
As verified by Treasury Labour were on track to be back into surplus by mid- 2027….now under the inept Nikki no boats , Luxon and Seymour we wiil be lucky to make surplus by 2031.
New absolute state-of -the- art Hyundai Cook Strait Ferries, (part of our main State Highway). would already have been delivered….. now….due to Nikki-no- boats and Luxon completely fucking up the deal with a stupid spiteful knee jerk cancellation… costing the country a $640 million dollar cancellation fine…we are not getting…what will now be inferior Chinese ferries …until 2030….
Not only that but we are now currently down to one old ferry…
This is 3rd World management of a country….we are not back on track at all….they are utterly incompetent and
N.Z. should thank their lucky stars that this lot were not in power when Covid struck.
Good on you Grant. Trevor is so easy to refute but I’ve lost patience with his silly comments. Thanks for doing us all a favour.
He blocks his ears to facts and good sense.
You are typical of the right wing voter. The right has been so poor and bad all you can do is bag the left who aren’t even in power. The irony is outrageously funny.
A decade ago, when activists began treating their political goals as sacred cows, the broader public largely remained silent. Emotional arguments, such as citing suicide rates, were frequently used to silence critics and label those who maintain biological definitions of sex as extremists. Very few people at the time were willing to challenge these groups, exposing a significant shift in Western moral and cultural principles. Even today, many people struggle to articulate a response when told that the medical establishment has scientifically proven that men can be women.Furthermore, a significant portion of New Zealanders still view this ideological shift within the medical fraternity as a trivial matter. They fail to see the deeper societal implications of redefining these fundamental realities.There are several reasons why dismantling the traditional family structure—specifically by presenting a father as a mother—presents long-term risks. The children of these households are ultimately deprived of distinct maternal and paternal role models, which play complementary roles in early development. By erasing the unique, irreplaceable functions of a mother and a father, society compromises the foundational environment that has historically provided children with balanced emotional growth and a stable sense of identity.
Ultimately, this broad cultural shift is directly reflected in New Zealand’s modern political landscape, particularly within left-wing voting blocs. For many voters, political parties on the left are no longer chosen merely for traditional economic policies like wealth redistribution or worker protections. Instead, voting left has increasingly become an endorsement of the very social changes described above. Because left-leaning parties have actively institutionalised these new definitions of gender and family into state policy, education, and healthcare, a vote for them is seen by critics as a rejection of foundational Western principles. As long as the public views these fundamental changes as trivial, left-wing parties will continue to secure the legislative power necessary to standardise these values, shifting the country’s cultural baseline even further away from traditional family structures.
Look at that motley lot. No stand out leader, no stand out policy, nothing for the people to get behind. The NZ Left is dead, can’t really be a Right if there is no Left. The buck starts and stops with the non existent mix supposedly representing the people.
What do we want……
Is the NZ Right beating the NZ Left? Most polling shows the country pretty much 50:50. But if the NZ Right does win the election, it will be largely down to one thing: the Left’s toxic obsession with radical identity politics.
Think about that next time you’re tempted to bash “cracker redneck males” yet again, Martyn.
I think you are obsessed….if you think the left is toxic and the right isn’t then, you
u have either lived in a right wing solo your whole life, along the lines of people like Seymour, or simply haven’t lead a very broad life talking to a wide variety of people.
I’m prescribing that you get out and about a bit more…Go talk to people like Hosking ,Soper, Heather DPA, Sean Plunkett, Duncan Garner, Peter Williams, Ryan Bridge etc.to experience real toxicity…do that 3 times a day for the next 6 weeks.
Half your post is correct. The other about toxic identity politics is completely wrong. If you had said that about NZ First, Tane Randall or ACT , Paul Henry then I’d 100 agree. It is the right that is toxic, that much is clear.
Don’t worry Martyn, the Left still has university lecturers making its case to the public……
And the right have, well, nothing.