The danger of Darleen Tana’s Greenwash, reviewing Labour’s retreat for casual revolution and will the quick Green Chloe leap over the lazy Red log?
The danger of Darleen Tana’s Greenwash
Green members elect their candidates and Darleen was a dream.
A female Māori small business owner of E Bikes on Waiheke Island with a moko?
She couldn’t be more perfect for the Greens!
The allegations against her of exploiting migrant labour are deeply embarrassing and on top of all the other recent bad news, paints a picture of middle class hypocrisy.
To those who hate the Greens, this is mana from heaven, but this is survivable for the Party as a whole as the allegations are at the low level of offence.
It does however highlight the vacantness of that Green Capitalism if the change isn’t structural.
Chloe’s first test as leader and she has done the right thing.
If there is any validity to the allegations, Darleen should stand down altogether.
What the entire Darleen issue has inadvertently exposed is how deeply rooted the need to exploit migrants labour is to the low wage economy.
If a bougie E Bike company on Waiheke Island can’t pay proper wages without exploiting migrant workers, who the fuck will?
Our economy is built upon stealing Māori land (and never paying it back), allowing agricultural producers to pollute without constraint and exploiting migrant labour for our low wage economy. This is what we is, this is who we are and minus any attempt to unionise the exploitation will simply get worse.
Reviewing Labour’s retreat for casual revolution
Their retreat last week had very different internal polling numbers:
Labour are too intellectually insecure to host the Opposition Summit and believe they just have to wait the Government out and voters will come back to them, which is fine but misses the extremism of the first 100 days of this Government and allows them off the hook for a visionless election campaign that had zero to offer voters.
Labour will continue to sit on their hands meaning the CTU needs to step up alongside Greenpeace, Auckland Action Against Poverty, Child Poverty Action Group to host an Opposition Summit with a far wider focus than Labour would have given it.
Yes Labour need to take from soft National voters, but they also need to appeal to their actual progressive base as well!
Labour are staring down a generational loss of the Auckland vote and if you can’t win Auckland, you can’t win the election.
If Labour are gong to sit on their hands, at least rearrange the talent pool to win those soft National voters WHILE appealing to the base.
Put Greg O’Connor into Police ffs he’s far more credible than Ginny and you know it!
Babs can keep Finance but give Parker the Economy and allow him to make the argument for a Capital Gains Tax AND a Wealth Tax AND a Ghost House Tax AND a Financial Transaction Tax AND a Sugar Tax! He’s the only one with the brains to manage this!
Make Arena Williams spokesperson on Auckland (she’s an incredible talent and Auckland needs a voice!) and make Damien O’Connor the spokesperson for rural economy and rural environment.
Will the quick Green Chloe leap over the lazy Red log?
The other main problem with Labour’s decision to sit on their hands and wait it out is that other political actors won’t do that!
Chloe is a unique candidate and allowing her to become the de facto Leader of the Opposition in terms of passion and vision is that you will get an demographic and class collapse in the Labour vote.
Without meaningful progressive policy, Labour lose the working class vote to apathy in Auckland and they lose the middle class vote to the Greens in Auckland.
Why would anyone under 40 vote Labour?
By sitting on their hands, Labour risk permanently losing that demographic to the Greens.
If the Māori Party and the Greens agreed to on Opposition Summit, Labour would have no choice but to attend.
The Political Left have to understand they are in danger from this Government because National/ACT and NZ First intend to fuck us up permanently.
If we don’t start fighting back now, there won’t be anything left to Govern if we do win in 2026!
What more proof do you need to see that this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government intends to permanently harm our movement?
This is the Government’s motto:
This Hard Right Racist Climate Denying Beneficiary Bashing Government is going to fuck over a vast chunk of NZ.
Is Labour going to stand with us and resist or are they going to wait the fight out and pretend to turn up later?
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Labour is full of privileged people with arts degrees who have never achieved anything outside of academia. You are probably expecting too much from them.
Inside academia?
Grant Robertsons BA honours dissertation (his highest level academic qualification) was an account of the restructuring of Otago University students Association in the 1980s. This was essentially an undergraduate level essay with no central thesis other than it represented a “step to the right”. This qualification thrust him into the heady heights of Minster of Finance within the Labour Government and subsequently Vice Chancellor of Otago University – deserved or not, you be the judge?
Labour are damaged goods and nothing but a decade and a complete reinvention is going to change that.
Veteran socialist George Galloway has won another dramatic by-election victory, spanking the major parties so bad that two Third Party candidates came first and second. Labour were reduced to single digits!
Jeremy Corbyn has been booted out of his own party, despite being the most popular Labour politician. He too will have no choice but to run Third Party when he stands again.
Considering that the Clintonite parties are now despised even in “Red Wall Labour” seats, and that the Greens have near-zero support outside wealthy electorates, why would organised labour even bother with either party? The mass working class support behind the Corbyn-Sanders-Mélenchon movement needs to coalesce internationally, on the basis of Third Party runs in Rust Belt seats.
I’ve been saying this for years, but Labour are deaf and blind. Hundreds of thousands of potential labour voters simply don’t vote. Their take on it seems to be that either there is no difference between the major parties – not necessarily true these days given the influence of minor parties – all that there is simply nothing in it for them. I’ve been suggesting that Labour try to organise these people but they are completely uninterested, I suspect because it would mean hard work, because the unions don’t exist any more to do that work for them. They’d sooner do the Blairite thing of fiddling around the edges of neoliberalism in the hopes of capturing some of National’s middle-class vote.
That will work perhaps but not long-term. It cements in the cyclical nature of New Zealand elections. I’m tempted to give up voting myself except I wouldn’t then feel I had the right to be bitching about political parties and what they do to the country.
Labour aren’t deaf & blind, they know exactly what they are doing.
The purpose of the new labour movements is to make the right look good.
When they’re in we get shite lite neo liberal economic policies and a massive attack on rights and freedoms. They are the other side of the same coin. No prime minister has freedom to do anything other than the bidding of the ruling class. The only difference between the two is National do it willingly and Labour (at least some of them) appear to do it grudgingly.
‘Labour reform’ will be nothing more than a rebranding and the eventual disappearance of a large enough electorate that benefits from National’s ponzi schemes – and thus a change of regime.
…or you could vote green and have the government slowly repossess your house.
Perhaps sacrificing to Cthulhu could improve Labour’s prospects?
It’s the unions that are key, and when they hold a summit they should speak plainly to Labour:
“We created you, and if you won’t do your job, we will destroy you!
Housing is a right – exploitable migrants are not – get your shit together and get the job done.
And let us hear not another peep of your fauxgressive agenda until every New Zealander is housed and fed.”
One can hope for such a revolt, but the sad fact is that union executive leadership in NZ has been infected by the same PMC types who came up in the ‘left’-neoliberal wing of student politics as occupy the official ‘Labour’ party. Just look at Tiny Andrew Little. They have to go too.
We need to support rank-and-file organizing against the collaborators.
You know it, Mohammed.
Hear hear my good man. We need more good straight practical thinking like this.
And ensure it gets listened to and followed – drawing attention to it as in these past feisty memories perhaps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0rTfmGFZys
Won’t happen Stuart because the biggest unions are all middle class now.
It is premature to say that Darlene Tana is guilty as charged. We in the public have yet to see the evidence behind the allegations, and we should suspend judgement on her case until we have.
However there are legitimate questions to be asked about candidate selection in the colonialist political system where evidence of moral character is the missing element. This problem is particularly marked in identity politics where a candidate can score points for being indigenous/immigrant/gay/female/refugee/business owner etc etc without anyone taking the time to look deeply into their moral character. Since identity politics fits naturally within the MMP system, it is a particular problem for the minor list parties, but is by no means limited to them, as the revelations about disgraceful conduct by more than a few Labour and National electorate MPs can attest.
Don’t be so truthful and nasty Martyn; we don’t want to talk about it! Never. How dare you say that. NZ doesn’t do things like that – well hardly ever.
Here is someone Indian? pondering on something as we rarely think about – well thinking is what we do ‘hardly ever’.
I find this guy commendable and an exemplar for us as we need to change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2lsbmVGY1g
Dead right, mosa.
She sounded like she was useless anyway. Better for someone else to have the job.
Labour faffed around for 9 years playing musical leaders while Key swanned around pretending to do stuff.
If they sit on their hands again, they will be sunk.
Get the obvious people into positions in which they have ample experience and start making hits on this idiot govt.
Do not expect voters to forgive and forget about that pathetic election campaign. But the Nasties also ran a pathetic campaign and Labour would not have lost if they’d been decisive enough to stick to some hard-hitting policies like CGT. But waffling around being afraid to offend people will not work.
Luxon has absolutely no credibility as a leader. People don’t like him any more now that he’s PM, than they did before the election. He’s gaffe-prone and contemptuous of everyone.
He can be told a fact and immediately does a Trump and whines, ‘It’s not fair’.
Winston is no asset as he proved again today and Seymour and his band of miss-fits are a danger to everyone. Even themselves.
They all embarrass themselves so why is it so hard is for Labour to embarrass them.
By not doing so you reinforce the idea that country boy often states. You are just as badly compromised by big business as they are.
O’Connor doesn’t want Police, he’s just feeding from the trough, hell he probably wouldn’t have held on to Ohairu if anyone more competent and less heinous than Nicola Willis was running against him