NEW ZEALAND GOT POPULISM early. If you count Rob Muldoon as this country’s first no-holds-barred populist, then the start-date is 1974. If, as most people do, you date the rise of populism in New Zealand from the advent of the NZ First Party in 1993, then our populist-in-chief is Winston Peters – and he’s been kicking around for a quarter-century.
This isn’t a case of the quick brown NZ First jumping over the lazy red Labour, it’s more a case the lazy red Labour has no idea there is a fox, that it is jumping or has a functioning idea of what gravity is or how it works.
Come on sleepy hobbits, even we can get this one!
ZB must be forced to put out a statement that they do not endorse the climate denial lies of Leighton Smith because while it is up to them to decide who uses their platform, but it is not up to them to decide their own facts on something as huge as global warming.
It’s strange to see that the infamous British politician Nigel Farage didn’t set the internet aflame in New Zealand, but I guess there’s no algorithm to the fickle beast of social media.
Jacinda’s critics view politics through the old Baby Boomer frame of winners and losers and as such their commentary is jaded and a judgement of insecurity rather than political insight.
There has been a spate of commentary by male media people recently going on and on about how Jacinda needs to become a “tougher” Prime Minister. The two New Zealand role models often cited as ‘tough’ are Robert Muldoon and Helen Clark.
The rights of working people will thus be traded back and forth like chips on the political poker table. Neither National nor Labour are really interested in hearing how workers themselves would prefer the modern workplace to be organised, or in ways that the twenty-first century economy, with all its technological miracles, might be so regulated as to ensure that the benefits of robotics and artificial intelligence accrue to the whole population – and not just the shareholders of the transnational corporations who own the patents.
In this one image they have reminded us of some of the humanity we lose in the debate.
If Don Brash & climate denying Leighton Smith had a baby, it would blame Māori for sea level rises.
This isn’t Fake News, it’s Fake Views.