TO HEAR THE National Party and other assorted right-wing beasts tell the story, the Greens have just sold their soul to the Devil. By whom they mean, presumably, that double-breasted Lucifer, Winston Peters, and his attendant pandemonium – NZ First. The Devil’s price, allegedly, is Green Party support for Winston’s “Waka-Jumping Bill”.
What most commentators have failed to grasp is that National didn’t offer any real new policy because they don’t have to.
National desperately want to revive the Hobbit Law victory they had last time against Actors Equity that delivered John Key such an enormous political victory.
Much has been written in scorn of the Greens somehow losing their moral and ethical compass in supporting the waka jumping legislation.
I am not one of them.
In New Zealand, across the world, the cultural response to mental health in the workplace is troubling. Broadly there’s been a lot of progress tackling the mental health stigma in recent years, but workplaces have not caught up to the important discussions happening in wider society.
With its appalling record in handling the cases reported in the media so far, Housing NZ has a huge bill ahead of it and will want to put this matter to rest asap. On their record of disrespect and callous attitudes to vulnerable tenants we expect HNZ will want to do lots of quick, grubby little deals with affected tenants and offer them “pocket money” compensation.
These are exciting times, with the smell of much-needed social and economic reforms in the air across many areas of life. At the same time, there are many crocodiles snapping at the heels of the government, and these can be ignored for only so long. The two biggest of these are the 30% government spending threshold that has been self-imposed, and the decision to ruffle powerful business interests with labour sector reform.
It’s been an interesting conference and I think some of the surface headlines suggest deeper moves we aren’t picking up on.
Charter Schools always seemed to be a solution searching for a problem.
The Woke Left would protest the Vagina Monologues for not being sensitive enough to women without vaginas. It’s like a Spinoff TV dinner party where Simon Wilson has just finished a 5 hour powerpoint presentation on the importance of cycle lanes while you’re stuck between Lizzie Marvelly and Toby Manhire arguing over who hates men most and who can firebomb the Pop-Up Globe fastest. You can’t get to a democratic majority of 51% if people suspect you want to legislate infant girls being gifted anything pink as a hate crime.