My question here is why is the theft of employer-owned property (the avocados) treated so differently to the theft of wages from workers? Why can stealing avocadoes get you a prison sentence of up to 10 years but stealing wages from workers gets barely a slap on the wrist?
Are all those animated piggy banks in BNZs TV advert secretly all neofascist thugs who bash the poor and disenfranchised at night when no ones looking?
The good news in all of this is that Labour-NZ First and the Greens are close enough to forming a Government to make this election a fight worth fighting.
What is the most important thing in the world? It is ALL the people, it is ALL the people, it is ALL the people
WHERE DOES LABOUR go from here? Because their Big Plan is fluttering down to earth in flaming tatters – burned out of the sky by Metiria Turei and the Greens.
Labour’s Big Plan? What’s that?
From a 6-year Health Minister who only acknowledged the problem this month, to a Prime Minister who opposes the call for a full-scale review of the mental health system, the Government has been floundering on this life and death issue. Gluckman has been rolled out in an attempt to show – seven weeks out from the election – that some high-powered thinking is going into the issue.
The government has partially backed down from some changes to immigration policy that would have reduced the flow of cheap labour to New Zealand employers. The changes maintain the essence of the policy which was to keep access to cheap labour from abroad, and keep that labour vulnerable and easily exploited when here.
We are so used to partisan politics, it can be a bit uncomfortable to deal with a political party that doesn’t fit into the usual boxes. People tend to pick a side, a tribe – left or right, red or blue – and they want to know if The Opportunities Party (TOP) are part of their tribe too.
Your lives matter and the cruelty you are all forced to live under by WINZ is a horror that those same smug vicious male arsehole rich prick broadcasters will never understand.
For a distressingly long interval it appeared that the Greens had abandoned this revolutionary narrative for a kinder, gentler, more environmentally friendly iteration of the neoliberal programme. Thankfully, Metiria Turei’s promise to make a bonfire of the infrastructure of neoliberal oppression – most especially of its poverty traps – has extended the promise of a better and fairer future to Kiwis who had almost forgotten how to hope.