The vast majority of New Zealanders resent the way Australia treat us and finally having a Government who will stand up to them is actually going to resonate with many voters.
We can stamp our feet like the Green Party and the Unions have and throw a tantrum and just refuse to actually engage with the process OR we can see this as an opportunity to directly influence our political and economic independence.
It is very easy for the traditional Left to call for grand gestures of defiance against the prevailing geopolitical realities: living with the consequences of such calls when you are in government is much harder.
Since the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis, all the developed world has done is kick the day of market reckoning down the road with more and more money printing. At some point this band-aid won’t be able to stem the pressure building and it will rupture with a backlash that will make the depression look like a week without pocket money.
So Gerry Brownlee is now an apologist for Australian torture camps that the Australian’s have walked away from on Manus Island?
After nearly 40 years of protesting, lobbying, direct action, media, and general political and social pressure the new government has announced that there will be no new mines on conservation land throughout New Zealand! Yeah !
It was sad reading Stephen Hickson’s defence of capitalism in the Press (25 October 2017). Sad because capitalism has delivered so much outright misery to so much of humanity over the last 300 years that it’s hard to believe anyone could be so blinkered.
National will call on massive public engagement from their voters and their financial backers to slow down the Select Committee process and scream about democracy being under attack if they aren’t allowed to have every Farmer and rich property owner in front of the Select Committee to complain about any new law.
What the Right wanted more than anything was Jacinda to march off to APEC trumpeting resistance so that when it fell over, they could blame her for the impending economic slump. What these forces desperately want is to spook the market so interest rates go up which would give every NZer with a mortgage an extra couple of hundred dollars a week in mortgage repayments for Christmas.
The bad news is that the Labour government has endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, with the suspension of a limited range of items, at the ministerial and leaders’ meetings in Da Nang, Viet Nam.