I say all this as someone who desperately wants to see Labour as the backbone of any new Government and Andrew Little as the Prime Minister with a very Green Cabinet, but there are some terrible political blunders being made and the ramifications could be a Fourth National Government.
…folks, here’s the problem with these types of farcical statements. Tolley is telling us that this drop in benefit numbers is somehow a good thing. What she isn’t telling you is how Tolley and these neoliberal welfare stormtroopers have gone about getting that reduction.
After Michael Wood’s runaway victory in Mt Roskill, anything other than a straightforward walkover in Mt Albert will be very bad news for Labour. Were Labour to lose, the party would be crucified in the news media and Andrew Little would come under renewed pressure to step aside.
The Mt Albert by-election is a good opportunity for the Greens to get their message out. It will essentially be a two-horse race between two capable candidates, the Greens Julie Ann Genter and Labour’s Jacinda Adern. Whoever wins, both will still be in Parliament, as both are now sitting party list MPs.
Nothing sums up how inncoulated the NZ population are to the debate about inequality than today’s Political Roundup in the NZ Herald by Bryce Edwards.
Not content to have the poorest New Zealanders face the biggest tax burdens and corrosive social problems our lowest income communities also face a plague of what can only be described as “parasites on poverty”.
Another year, another hike in the price of cigarettes.
Activists from many campaign groups united pledging material and physical solidarity to stop the ethnic and social cleansing of working class Glen Innes, built on Maori land to provide “homes for heroes” after the suffering of two world wars and the Depression.
The joint State of the Nation address is a very smart move by Labour and the Greens. The purpose of Unity and the symbolism of that Unity is what gives voters confidence to vote for them. No one wants to vote for a Party that looks like it’s going to rip itself to pieces 30 seconds after getting elected.
I learned that Rogernomics had unlocked something ugly and selfish in older and younger middle class New Zealanders alike. In the minds of those 10,000 students – the people we would come to know as “Generation X” – a free tertiary education was simply their entitlement.