Why Jacinda is Obama and what this Labour Government has taught us about the self serving Public Service
Obama’s legacy as President of America is that no matter the soaring rhetoric and powerful articulation of cherished progressive values is simply not enough.
At the end of the day he rode a Military Industrial Complex Monster riven by corporate interests and Fox News talking points.
There was only so much Obama could do and much that he could not.
The same is true of Jacinda.
I have written many times of the challenges Labour have had fighting the interests of the self serving Public Service. There is a world of difference between winning an election and governing and because Labour didn’t have a 100 day legislative agenda in 2017 (because they didn’t expect to win) and didn’t have a 100 day legislative agenda in 2020 (because they didn’t expect to win a majority).
Once in power, the Ministry slowly grinds down and outwits its poorly resourced Minister who is dependent upon the Ministry for all information. If you don’t hit the ground running and ram through all the radical change in the first 100 days, the Ministry will shut it down and strangle it off in favour of their interests and long term goals.
This mistake of not having a 100 day plan must be dumped if Labour have any chance of leading a Government past the next election.
Jacinda promised transformative change in 2017.
The 27 000 now on emergency housing wait lists are still waiting for that transformative change.
The increased number of children living in cars are still waiting for that transformative change.
Those needing the 100 000 food parcels each month are still waiting for that transformative change.
Entire generations locked out of home ownership are still waiting for that transformative change.
The 4000 beneficiaries with disabilities that Labour have sanctioned on welfare are still waiting for that transformative change.
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 (golf courses) 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 kiwis and 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: Fair Pay Agreements that allow unionisation and real collective bargaining power for workers outside the tiny public service clique they currently cover.
8: Taxation focused on corporations and banks like financial transaction tax and first $10 000 tax free.
9: Offer nurses, teachers and Drs free education and living allowances in return for bonded time in our health and eduction systems.
10: 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.
11: Reinstate adult education classes to create the space our community can gather.
12: Legalise pot and use the taxation to do something meaningful to help people get off meth.
…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.
We need more real economic solutions on the Left and far less pronoun policing.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to Corporations.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Jacinda promised transformative change in 2017
And won 37% of the vote. The electorate’s appetite for Labour’s transformation wasn’t so strong. Whether it was Winston Peter’s handbrake, or Ardern’s pursuit of the centre, transformation got dialed back. Until Covid, Labour began to poll higher, registering in the low- to mid-forties, with government parties remaining over 50%. When the pandemic arrived, the lack of transformation made it easier for Labour to gather votes from a broken National Party.
The path for Labour to retain power is to recover voters now flowing back to National. That means targeting voters more concerned about the price of a block of tasty cheese, not transformation.
Exactly! Wellington city is a pro Labour/Green city since forever, hence to say public service are the problem is bit disingenious.
Looking at Martin’s points:-
Most were already promised by the current govt in some form, and none delivered.
It starts and ends with ministers and their “yes minister” ministry – the nz version of emperor’s new clothes.
Jacinda is Obama in terms of being all talk but a complete failure in practice, and Obama created Trump as a consequence.
Labour is the political wing of the self serving public service though, it’s not a hundred day plan thing, it’s the fact their interests are not the best interests of the country.
Labour are a hollow Trojan horse for Maori separatism and identity politics – the things the public service rely on for endless funding and need for more bureaucracy, but that actually tear this country apart.
If Jacinda is Obama, it’s just as well she isn’t in charge of drones then.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
I agree Jacinda is our Obama love overseas not so much in NZ. When the history is written of her period in power in I believe it will say so much promised so little achieved . Compared to Clark she will not rate especially for the effect on the wellbeing of the poor .
Martyn, that’s an excellent plan for the next time Labour are elected, which based on NZ political history will be in 2032. Between now and then I am sure Labour can announce some plans to announce consultations on proposed policy research – they seem to be very good at that.
Let’s hope Greens (2 or 3 or 4 of them with principles), TPM and even TOP are preparing their bottom lines.
From what I’m seeing and hearing, Labour could be in for a bloody big shock and it’s probably already too late for them to get their shit together.
Danyl nailed it the other day with his Sunday Essay with TDB’s reference to it here:
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/08/30/a-self-serving-public-service-a-parliament-of-property-owners-land-of-the-wrong-white-crowd/
He’s nailed what has changed within the ps (and political enablers) over the last 30 or so years.
On that thread, I think I asked what is the way out of it.
My reckons and thinkings in this space going forward are to vote the way MMP was intended – without all the spin and bullshit politicians would have us believe and listen to. That is to electorate vote for the most competent and possibly experienced candidate available, and to party vote for the party whose policies most closely align with yours. Spin and bullshit isn’t working anymore – we’re at peak PMC, peak egos, peak individualism, peak spin and bullshit.
Trust of course is a big issue, but they’ve gone done it to themselves. If it takes another cycle or two for people to awoke, then so be it. The sooner the better
The hilarity is that Labour wont and certainly Jacinda wont change a damn thing… the track record of Labour is essentially making things worse since the Lange govt. (If you dont count aspiration and virtue signals) I’m sure Jacinda will refute leaving those out.
Yet somehow the likes of the author keep voting for them, defending them…
What’s that saying about doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?
Theyll change next time, just one more term… honest…
I always liked the snippy quip which was apparently set at the disadvantages of Big Government. When there was a hiatus in the upward movement in the USA space race someone said that they should have called the failed rocket The Civil Servant:
‘Won’t work and you can’t fire it’.
It’s slightly amusing to have the same feeling now that privatisation has us by the throat with eager beavers rushing around setting up financing for their latest grande concretisation in projects (in French as it sounds grander than in English). In theory we don’t have to fire most as they are on shortish contracts. But they have still got us there as they might be recompensed if the contract is not rolled over for another term. But hey they are all generic anyway, so provided they know how to pick their teeth with both steel, wooden (and now greenl, bamboo) toothpicks we’ll get a fresh face on our smartphones toot sweet.
In fact it’s Jacinda who has encouraged the creation of a flabby and incompetent civil service. Quotes from two recent articles:
Newshub: “…when Labour came to power there were 339 communications staff working in public sector agencies. By 2021 this has climbed nearly 50% to 497. Similarly, the budget for government “spin”, had gone up from $33.8m in 2017 to $55.3m in 2021.”
and
“Labour’s spending on contractors and consultants has climbed to nearly $1bn a year, despite Labour coming to power suggesting that they would rein in this use of the private sector. Much of this is spent on the “Big Four” contractor firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst and Young.”
This is clearly a government on its last legs, scrambling to make stuff up on the fly and lying to voters in order to cover its tracks. All their policy initiatives have by now failed and several sectors are in real crisis: Health. Education. Crime and policing. Housing and homelessness. Economic. Race relations. Child welfare. All of which were perfectly predictable years ago because they are the result of their own policies – ‘own goals’ by this government.
Labour are Master and Commander over the law and order ministries and by my reckoning have got exactly what they wanted. It’s just the consequences for the rest of us aren’t good as a result!
Gosh Martyn, the National PR team are out in force this morning, all froth and distemper and not a single solution in sight. If you cruise the comments world you’ll see the same narrative espoused by numbers of anonymous individuals and after having found,on stuff, consecutive identical hate comments under different pseudonyms could I be forgiven in thinking that Bob the first, Krauty et al are not real people they’re just figments of imagination of comb over Dennis who sits in Hootens office?
Don’t worry about all that, NZ now has more inclusive language like chest feeding and people with uterus.
Pity that the inclusive language comes at the expense of cancelling out woman’s language and experience.
Funny how nobody wants to be a midwife anymore!!!!!
Government agencies don’t provide a real house in emergency housing, but apparently have people knocking down the door to teach you Te reo at 8am.
Talk and virtue signalling is cheap and the main focus of wokesters! (Although cancelling others is even more of a priority).
Real results like housing, quality jobs, health care, education, quick justice, are a lot harder to achieve and going backwards, fast.
If Labour had given the wealthy tax cuts while raising GST for the poor. Turned Christchurch into a car park. sold off our generation and statehousing. Build a couple of conference centers. Flooded the country with migrants, tourists and students and then told us we had a rock star economy would you think they were competent.
#11 Give Pharmac the $3,000,000,000 a year it needs to adequately operate as it was originally intended and meet the Oecd average of a minimum 10% of the health budget for medicines.
oops That should have been #13 not # 11 re Pharmac funding.
The pathetic minimal % increases a year has to stop.
It is a major reason our hospitals are collapsing.
Sorry Martyn you can’t compare Ardern to Obama. Ardern has it comparatively easy compared to being the first black president in a country with like the US. He probably burnt most of his capital on the Affordable Health Act which apparently made him a raving communist. Also he did not have both houses for very long did he (?) whereas second term Ardern has complete license to not be National with a tiny bit of empathy for more than the top 5%