The Laila Harre rule of politics with Labour
The most important political lesson I’ve ever learned in NZ Politics is from the Laila Harre School of change.
Back when she was in Alliance, she had to force Labour at gun point to agree to maternity leave.
Can you remember and imagine that?
Having to force Labour to give maternity leave.
Laila teaches us that if we ever want the fucking Labour Party to actually serve the people and not the vested interests of the Professional Managerial Class, then you need to smash Labour’s head against a wall, pout a gun to their head and scream ‘do it’.
That’s the only way Labour will act in the interests of the people, if you put a gun to their head.
Look at the resistance Labour are digging in to stop any debate on Tax despite the IRD showing us NZ Capitalism is rigged!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry!
There’s no point raising benefits, MSD and WINZ and IRD claw back not of that so the beneficiary is left with the empty promise of transformation, a better way to avoid the State clawing back anything we give poor people is to fully fund universal services.
Here’s what a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government should be committed to passing in the first 100 days of the 2023 election…
1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help. The slow incrementalism touted by favourite public sector for dragger apologist Max Rashbrooke isn’t good enough because the lower middle classes are feeling the same pinch thanks to mortgage rises and universal school lunches and breakfasts would help them as well.
2: 50 000 State Homes for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs plus Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements)
3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.
4: 30% stake holder in a new Government backed supermarket operation run to provide lower food prices for kiwism better prices for supplies and better conditions for workers.
5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health plus a sugar tax.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Taxation focused on corporations and banks like financial transaction tax and first $10 000 tax free.
8: Offer nurses, teachers and Drs free education and living allowances in return for bonded time in our health and eduction systems.
9: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances.
10: Refund night schools – One of the worst things Key did when he entered Office was destroy Helen Clark’s night school budgets. Sure that Italian Cooking class wasn’t generating Chefs, but the free night school classes allowed lonely disconnected people to have a social life. It allowed Schools to be used as community hubs and if well designed could become social health hubs and distribution points for community health outreach. We urgently need our people to have places where they can mix and mingle and engage because isolation sends them down fucking rabbit holes.
11: Legal Cannabis market to fund meth rehabilitation and create 5000 jobs and create quarter of a billion in revenue for the State plus remove cannbis crime from the Courts and Prison.
…Kiwis have to see a progressive Government ACTUALLY doing shit in the first 100 days or they won’t believe any change is coming and when you consider the economic maelstrom we are entering, the most vulnerable amongst us will be screaming for real change.
If we on the Left don’t offer voters real solutions to their material problems and instead prefer to micro aggression police the latest middle class virtue signals of hate speech, militant pronoun demands and screaming everyone is racist, we are fucked politically in 2023.
Labour’s political sins can only be forgiven by a radical 100 day Labour/Green/Māori Party manifesto.
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Solid sensible ideas none of which will probably be adopted.
Taking GST off something won’t work – retailers will just put the price up and make more profit.
Easier to make a law of a percentage must be wholesale to New Zealand citizen and regulate retail chains to a set price. But this is against every bone in all the major parties in a privatized economy.
Subsidizing manufacturers and producers might have to start again.
Funny that – seems there was a place to subsidize production in NZ which gave the govt skin in the game for the consumer. Who would have thought?
The cost of taking off GST on certain items would have absorbed the tax taken off so there would be little our no gain.The Maori Party should their lack of financial understanding to push this on their manifest .
Feeding school kids is a good idea to get them all to turn up .It is a shame it is necessary but it is a realistic solution to stop the poverty rot.
The rest of the list will never happen if it has not been done by now as no Party will ever get the majority to push through change.
Where are you getting your information from ? You sound a bit hair brained.
Removing GST on essential food items and putting a SUGAR TAX on high sugar content products is a NO BRAINER, this is Maori Party Policy and could actually win over a lot of pakeha voters.
I got my information from an accountant about the cost of policing removal of GST which at present is a simple system.I would agree to a sugar tax .
Australia did it and we are so much smaller, surely?
My son had a coffee bar and his accountancy costs were large due to cost of extracting the none gst items purchased from the supermarket
Tax the rich!
Let’s face it, long term the only way hard core monetarism, and the NZ neo liberal state and Parliamentary Rogernomics consensus has survived, is down to union busting and “Ruthanasia”. The Natzos 1991 Employment Contracts Act drastically undermined previous union power, and the class collaborationist takeover resulting in the NZCTU did the rest. To this day the CTU still embraces Tripartism–engagement with the anti working class forces is never a happening thing!
Martyn’s list is faultless–what is needed is the political power and community organisation to achieve it. The Labour Caucus will indeed do nothing until forced to. We now have a non collective method, non union generation of people not used to fighting back for economic justice.
All efforts need to go into organising–the French showed the way on May Day–fighting in the streets.
Yes.
We must face reality: there is no traditional left wing party in NZ and hasn’t been for decades.
By traditional I mean one based on economic and social egalitarianism, which generally starts with seeking to make economic structures serve the citizens rather the some abstract concept of the system or “market”.
Number 12 Should be Pharmac to FUND ALL MEDSAFE APPROVED medicines within 12 months of approval.
Every other western world country can do it so why are we taking an average of 7.7 years and up to 25 years to fund medicines.
WHY DO YOU KEEP LEAVING THAT OFF YOUR LIST Martyn ?
I’m all for that pouting. Let’s keep Laila’s face in front of us, she was not only good looking but she had integrity and as Peter Cook said, ‘We are willing to pay for it’, (because it is so needed).
Ms Jacinda was an icon of hope who was interesting to look at but Laila could match her on all points I think.
Ah yes, Laila Harre, one of the rich, landed gentry Martin hates so much. Leeches IIR
Stuff your cynicism and negativity up your funkin wagnell – a usa riposte from way back but I just feel like it.
More political illiteracy, Laila Harre was instrumental in gaining paid parental leave, Kiwi bank and a number of other useful reforms for working class and middle class NZers.
If Labour had not poured resources in West Auckland end of Tai Tokerau to defeat Hone Harawira, Internet Mana would have had a presence in Parliament and much more would have been achieved–like “feed the kids”.
If you look at Kim Dotcom’s Twitter feed, you will realize that we had a lucky escape when his party was defeated. The guy is QAnon through and through.
At the time, Internet Mana was a circuit breaker in terms of doing something about John Key, which no one else had managed.
If Laila and Hone had made it to Parliament they would not have been subservient to Dot Com, who was clearly a political amateur and opportunist. Hone takes orders from very few apart from his old mates and elements of the Māori world.
Never say never in politics–but just remember this–the Daily Blog was a big supporter of the “moment of truth” too.
And an alternative to the faded greens; they have either gone limp from not being watered enough, or gone slimy from too much liquidity. Either way not a green shoot party any more.
Lol Martyn, what do you think the 14 + 3118 would do if you tried to alter the tax arrangements? Tax the rich?! What a empty platitude. They’re only here because its better than elsewhere in their specific circumstances. Change the rules, see what happens. Money is mobile.
I’m not in the 3118 but even so I’m not a tax resident because elsewhere is better. No need here for CGT, wealth or transaction tax because no welfare for bludgers and losers. An economy that encourages investment, work, savings and that is streets ahead of NZ in infrastructure.
Go ahead and impose all those taxes – you’ll just be chasing fewer and fewer dollars in the dying, strangled economy that is New Zealand, all while you police pronouns and hand over the goodies to the tribal elites (who don’t pay tax but that’s an inconvenient truth as well…)
“Here’s what a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government should be committed to passing in the first 100 days of the 2023 election”
Where’s your gun! What do you propose to be the gun that initiates change?
It is not about we, on the Left, after all, it is about that mob, Labour, who supposedly represents the people, and what they propose to do, therefore will do for us. Where’s the gun, where’s the force that will both illicit the change in them, and then force them to act upon these changes.
Where’s the gun…..
You forgot to add NZ First to the Labour/gree n/ Maori Govt. Then u have transformation and night classes.