NZ voters won’t be fooled again – why Labour/Greens/Māori Party must declare a first 100 days agenda
There is a lot of pain on the Left at a sense Jacinda has failed us, that the transformative change passed us all by.
The screeds of minute extras that have been held up by Labour as evidence of their attempts all pale into nothing when the MSD, IRD and WINZ clawbacks are all taken out as inflation explodes.
Yes Jacinda saved us from the Covid War, but she’s losing the Covid Peace.
I think that most voters don’t understand how NZ politics work and they don’t understand how Jacinda is failing when Labour have an MMP majority.
They are legitimate questions and are valid ones, how can a Party with an unprecedented MMP majority still seem to do sweet fuck all on the big issues confronting us as a society, economy and culture.
It starts at the 2017 election.
In an act of desperation and true leadership, Andrew Little handed Jacinda the leadership months out from the 2017 election which was strategically designed to eliminate the Māori Party and United Future and on election night the specials and overseas vote weren’t counted leaving a deflated Jacinda to tell the country we hand’t won when in fact the specials and overseas vote were always going to go our way and I believed Winston was going to go with us.
The strategy of knocking out National support parties won us the 2017 election but because no one in the Labour leadership expected to win, there was no 100 day legislative agenda to ram through the moment you get into Parliament and if you don’t do that, the Wellington Bureaucracy will kill off any of your reform agenda for their own interests.
This is what most NZers don’t understand about NZ politics, winning power is VERY different from managing power. If you don’t arrive on day one with with a clear legislative agenda and enough mana to intimidate the Wellington Bureaucracy, you get nothing done.
Representative Democracy in NZ is a masquerade so that you will participate and give it legitimacy, the truth is that the Wellington Bureaucracy runs the country and their middle class neoliberal pandering decides policy implementation, not the feckless and easily manipulated Ministers.
Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020, so they’ve had no real 100 day legislative agenda to ram through and as such have been stymied ever step by the Wellington Bureaucracy.
Jacinda may be kind and she may really want transformative change, but if you don’t come to Wellington with a clear plan as to how to force the Bureaucracy to implement your manifesto, then transformative change becomes a virtue signal of aspiration rather than actual policy.
Kindness becomes Neo-Kindness that aggrieves rather than inspires.
The Greens and Māori Party must avoid this by clearly telling voters now what they will force Labour to pass in the first 100 days of a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government so that the Wellington Bureaucracy can be thwarted. Unfortunately the Greens are socially connected at the hip to the Wellington Bureaucracy and have all the offensive capacity of slow growing moss.
The last chance for Left progressive policy is a list of bottom line first 100 day laws to force Labour into being more Bernie Sanders than cautious Grant and Jacinda are confident to attempt.
Here’s what a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government should be committed to passing in the first 100 days of the 2023 election…
1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help. The slow incrementalism touted by favourite public sector for dragger apologist Max Rashbrooke isn’t good enough because the lower middle classes are feeling the same pinch thanks to mortgage rises and universal school lunches and breakfasts would help them as well.
2: 50 000 State Homes for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs plus Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements)
3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.
4: 30% stake holder in a new Government backed supermarket operation run to provide lower food prices for kiwism better prices for supplies and better conditions for workers.
5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health plus a sugar tax.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Fair Pay Agreements that allow unionisation and real collective bargaining power for workers outside the tiny public service clique they currently cover.
8: Taxation focused on corporations and banks like financial transaction tax and first $20 000.
9: Offer nurses, teachers and Drs free education and living allowances in return for bonded time in our health and eduction systems.
10: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances.
…Kiwis have to see a progressive Government ACTUALLY doing shit in the first 100 days or they won’t believe any change is coming and when you consider the economic maelstrom we are entering, the most vulnerable amongst us will be screaming for real change.
If we on the Left don’t offer voters real solutions to their material problems and instead prefer to micro aggression police the latest middle class virtue signals of hate speech, militant pronoun demands and screaming everyone is racist, we are fucked politically in 2023.
We need more real economic solutions on the Left and far less pronoun policing.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to Corporations.
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I do not buy into the excuses Labour did not realise running for office meant they might just get in, much less 2020. But if that was really so, definitely no point voting for these fools again!
But nor do I think they had no plan or control of ministries, because as an example I see Labour’s will and fingerprints all over law and order, (or the definite lack thereof law and order!).
Jacinda appoints Coster late in term 1, an academic intellectual liberal with little actual policing experience and eventually appoints Poto as Minister to cement that position ensuring the police approach is only to react and late and very selectively at crime trends and rather lead with a weird form of social working.
Drug possession of all types becomes a “health” issues, pseudo decriminalised and far more effectively than Chloe could have hoped for, but without the health system or buy in from users for the “health” theory to solve the problems.
The courts remain severely underfunded but many weak judges cannot help themselves and buy into the liberal kindness seeing light sentencing of those who make it past light weight policing, dominate.
Kelvin as Corrections minister empties the jails.
And the funny thing of it all is, I don’t think fiscal imperatives feature here, it’s some other motive!
The difference between previous governments and this one in the law and order area alone is night and day, pretty impressive change for a government who can’t control their ministries!
I’m afraid Labour are otherwise incompetent or fully complicit in the status quo of all other government business. But as law and order proves, if they want to, they can do what ever they want!
I wonder how much this would cost. While The Greens and the Maori Party may be able to get way without costing their plans, Labour can not do so. Remember “Show me the money” from the 2011 election.
Just looking at the plan, I reckon it is about $15 billion.
However, there is one part I do support and that is free lunches at all schools. It is the norm in the UK and the US and most European countries. I reckon a 1 to 2 billion annual cost, plus capital for the facilities. Not so keen on breakfast, except in special cases. That would require all kids to arrive at school at 8.00.
“ That would require all kids to arrive at school at 8”. Not a problem for kiddies with siblings in daycare or pre-school. Daycare kids may be booked in from 8am- 4pm, and preschool children from 8am – 6pm. Quite a juggling act for the parents/s rushing along streets with buggies or trying to find a parking space.
Vote for them a third time, because this time they will actually do something progressive and transformational?
Yeah, no. They had their chance and they utterly blew it.
Use “the public works act to seize land” is a great idea but since, historically, it has mainly been used to seize Maori land is there enough Maori land left to seize.
I agree with the importance of hitting the road running in the first 100 days but Labour have had 1700 plus days since then and what has been achieved. You need talented people working together on a cohesive plan and Labour seems to have neither. Although in their defense Peters extracted a huge price from them and derailed any real transformation in the first 1100 days.
Yes Peter H. All those wankers who make out like Māori have nothing to be pissed about tend forget the government just helped themselves.
Personally I am against the government stealing assets as much as I am against SOEs being flogged off cheap to the private sector. Both are wrong.
In completely unrelated news Hugh Grant is a legend. Having the Benny Hill theme blaring outside the House while Tory’s explain the departure of Boris was priceless
11. Implement WEAG recommendations, end benefit sanctions that force solo parents, the sick and disabled into unsuitable work.
It’s just too convenient to claim, ‘they didn’t have a 100 day plan’.
Every party pressumably has something similar, so they know what to ask for if in negotiations or when debating in Parliament, or being interviewed. Surely MP’s need to know the ‘party line’?
That B.S was used ‘by Trump’ to justify his appauling Presidency.
They are paid a LOT of money to be organised and ready to do their job. So I’m sorry ‘they weren’t ready’ is too convenient and sounds more like a ‘great lie, repeated frequently’ that people will hopefully accept.
She has done nothing (that matters) because she had NO intention of changing anything significant. It’s that simple.
Movement not changes, as per your great meme.
Sadly who else can we vote for? The option are two TERRIBLE and undemocratic parties (that act PURELY for the 1 & 9% you mention a lot (controlling the 90%)). They are most probably just ONE party doing a great job at hidding that fact, as per in the USA.
One party Government, where you (we the 90% no-bodies) can only vote for a slight flavour change.
Hear, hear, ‘my’ good man. Now is the time to come to the aid of THE COUNTRY!
School lunches, I agree should be for all kids. At the moment one school 200 m down the road gets free lunches , yet the other one does not.
Get rid of Jacinda, maybe Robertson as PM and a new Ministry of Works to build 100,000 State houses so that citizens don’t have to die in their cars
If the Maori Party say they will go with Labour why would voters not just vote for Labour and cut out the middle man.I feel this is what happened in 2017 when they said they would go with National
Besides before voting and finding out what sort of human is standing for being an MP – we should know th CEOs and other top managers of the Bureaucracy, and have little summaries of their past jobs from leaving school also uni background.
This is why we need to split our vote .
Party vote Green , Maori or top
Seat vote Labour.
Until Labour start seeing their party vote dropping through the floor at election time they will continue to pander to the centre.