The wounds that so many are speaking from can’t be argued with, they need to heal first before they can listen and I don’t think there is going to be a lot of listening in 2018.
DOC has great people doing a fantastic job but it’s had nasty, venal ministers like Nick Smith and Maggie Barry who have done their best to drive it into the ground.
The late Jim Anderton and his movement was potentially an enabler. But the neo-liberal political project which he opposed has trundled on ever since and has outlived him, which is a shame. We could do with a new transformational spirit here to overcome inequalities and the rise of the super-rich and overpaid and the poor and underpaid. Any candidates?
One of the things dear to Jim’s heart was the idea that the State should use its power to make good outcomes and not leave it to the free market. In that vein, here are some upgrades for 2018 that we should push from a progressive Government.
Vested commercial interests + pretence of democratic participation + culture war values = National in Opposition.
Like me, many other Iranians participated in the 1979 revolution without fully understanding the endgame or the nature of the forces that propelled it forward. The result of that blind participation was that people’s dream of a secular democracy turned into an oppressive theological nightmare.
If we want to honour Jim, the new Government should immediately pass legislation to make dental care free for children and teenagers, if we want to see Jim’s vision survive, we must all demand the new Government lives up to its obligations and not subcontract them out to the free market.
Here is one of this country’s best and bravest environmentalists admitting that his advocacy and the science behind his advocacy has been threatened…
Jim Anderton made a great and irreplaceable contribution to our society and democracy. Without his leadership of NewLabour and the Alliance – and his support of MMP – we might still be stuck with a narrow, two-party, first-past-the-post political system – like Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States. We owe Jim a lot.
It’s not that I want this compassion to be removed from the elderly or the veterans, I just wish that the same empathy could be extended to the beneficiaries whose lives they make miserable.
