In spite of the fact that barely thirty days have passed since Winston Peters anointed Jacinda Ardern as New Zealand’s first progressive prime minister in nine years, John is ready to call the Left onto the streets in protest at her government’s refusal to walk away from the CPTPP.
New Zealand has an employment crisis that the last National Government has refused to engage with and this denial has left tens of thousands of Kiwi workers without the wages, job security and dignity that employment can give them.
Julie Anne Genter, Andrew Little and Phil Twyford have followed Jacinda’s political leadership over Manus Island and have each challenged the status quo and demanded more.
If New Zealand is going to actively push this, then let’s hope the zombified agreement is one that benefits New Zealand and the people of the countries involved, and is not a Frankenstein-monster Labour regrets. I have hope that it will be, but the devil is in the detail.”
Labour says it has negotiated a softening of some of the most odious of the TPPA’s provisions, but this doesn’t pass the sniff test. The ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) process remains intact. All that has been negotiated is a small reduction in the circumstances where it can be used.
An odd bit of state propaganda popped up on Radio NZ last week. They interviewed a ‘guard’ from Manus Island who warned us that if we took in refugees we would be asking for trouble…
YOU HAVE TO GO BACK A LONG WAY to find anything remotely resembling Australia’s current treatment of New Zealand. For a supposedly friendly government to deliberately inject inflammatory disinformation into the political bloodstream of its supposedly closest neighbour is an extraordinarily provocative act. Not quite an act of war, but the sort of intervention that can all-too-easily provoke a catastrophic loss of trust.
The right of workers to an alternative holiday when working on a public holiday has been strongly affirmed in an Employment Relations Authority decision against Wendco (NZ) Limited, the company that operates the Wendy’s stores in New Zealand.
The leak today of an internal strategy paper is so woeful and concerning, it’s like catching your Surgeon checking on how to do your operation on wikipedia.
In every example, National’s response is bitter, angry, resentful and spiteful. On every issue they have spent 9 years making worse all they have as a response to the solution is more of the poisonous thinking that helped exacerbate the problem in the first place.