The 2023 NZ election will be a fight over who NZ fears most, a National/ACT Government or a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government.
We have lived through a political period of time since MMP that has managed to dilute and temper the idealogical extremes of Left/Right politics in NZ.
The need to compromise and pull punches is fundamental to the MMP dynamic HOWEVER that completely gets thrown out the window if there is no political centre left.
The political centre has been hollowed out so much under MMP that Labour and National are almost indistinguishable in their acquiescence to neoliberal mantra.
The far left and far right have enormous pent up political tension that will rupture once Labour or National are dependent on their numbers for a majority.
These highly polarised times have the potential to create an outcome that is hated regardless of which side wins.
National/ACT Government:
What you need to appreciate about Christopher is that his evangelical prosperity theology means his 7 properties is proof positive that Jesus loves him.
His CEO routine can do the 45 second sound bite, but time and time and time again his total lack of intellectual curiosity has him blunder policy that he has to walk back 24 hours later.
That’s not a handicap for winning because National are selling his enormous self certainty to a frightened and uneasy electorate. The problem won’t be winning and sticking to a very bland script, the problem will be the total implementation of hard right ACT policy David Seymour will be able to force pass Luxon who sees things like policy as something the little people do.
Christopher loves the first class passengers and when he wants to get working class he talks to the pilots and first class cabin staff, but those who can’t afford to fly God Airways is a bottom feeder.
This means the yellow quick fox will jump all over the lazy blue log and National will be held to ransom by a jubilant Seymour who will see amputating the State as his final gift to Milton Friedman so he can hand on heart tell Satan that he fulfilled his obligations to the free market meaning he can finally resign from politics and make some real money in the private sector.
Seymour is very funny, very charismatic and a very clever politician who is at the peak of his political powers, he will run circles around Christian Lex Luther and Nicola Willis.
I don’t believe for one second that the vast majority of Kiwis have any true comprehension of just how radical a National/ACT Government would truly be.
- Māori going to the Waitangi Tribunal over cancellation of 3 waters: The moment the National/ACT Government scrap 3 Waters, Māoridom will go straight back to the Waitangi Tribunal, win the Court Case and force Luxon into his own Helen Clark moment and be forced to pass law to simply confiscate the water. This will cause an enormous eruption of violent protest.
- Mass immigration: National will simply implement John Key’s pump and dump policy of open door immigration to inflate growth rates while causing enormous stress on the groaning underfunded infrastructure and send rents soaring. This will cause enormous social dislocation and a rise in race relation tensions.
- Expansion of Oranga Tamariki Big Data Experiment: National created the Oranga Tamariki Frankenstein and wants more welfare decided by algorithm as a means to de-invest welfare. Luxon has already championed this model.
- Mass Dairy intensification: It’s all National have as an economic policy.
- Mass Property Speculation: They will remove any of the bare tinkering Labour did and help the speculators spin prices higher.
- Mutilation of the State: ACT are serious about wanting to amputate the Ministry for Women, Youth, Māori, Pacific People and Ethnic Communities while slashing the Human Rights Commission. The resulting Public Service Strikes will gridlock Wellington. If there’s one thing the Public Service can do well, it is protesting for their own interests.
- War on Crime: Expect the paramilitary police expansion to occur quickly with a whole dump of new civil liberty breaching powers to supposedly keep us safe but will almost immediately be abused as they increasingly get used on the protesting Left.
- Prison riot and explosion in numbers: The war on crime will see far more in prison and National prefers puritan counter productive prisons so expect them to be crammed full and explode in a seething chain reaction of prison riots once National grant Corrections new powers to beat prisoners with. Corrections are very corrupt and once they gain new powers to bash prisoners with, they’ll be some prisoner who gets beaten within an inch of his life which that will trigger prison riots.
- Rise of more Mass Surveillance & Political violence: The protests such a radical agenda creates will demand the State turn its attention back on the Left while National supporters clutch their pearls appalled at the aggression the Left are protesting with and rally around Luxon rather than criticise the policy. They will call on Luxon to spy on the radical lefties.
- Higher Government Debt: Luxon is no free marketeer, he believes he has 7 properties because Jesus loves him, if debt goes up to pay for the extra prisons, extra Police, extra dairy intensification, extra welfare experiments, extra fake growth, then so be it, he doesn’t care. Oh David Seymour will hate it, but he’ll be so fat and full on his amputation of 6 State agencies that he’ll only be able to mount a burp as a protest.
Labour/Green/Māori Party Government:
The rule of NZ politics is that you literally have to bang Labour’s head against a wall and put a gun in their mouth before they ever agree to implement meaningful change that challenges neoliberalism.
Labour are the moderate management team who take over once National have fucked up.
Any radical revolutionary zeal was drained inside Labour once their activist base became middle class marxists. If you want Labour to be transformative, you have to literally force them to.
To appeal to those in pain who have been promised the world and delivered a cold Uber eats, the left block must promise radical change within the first 100 days of the new Labour/Green/Māori Party Government.
This will require the Greens and the Maori Party working together to put a list of bottom lines that must be passed within 100 days to generate the urgency that is required to make previous Labour voters believes again.
The Māori Party and Greens must save Jacinda from her and Grant’s innate caution.
The problem is the Māori Party necessity to form 51% will be used by the Right to cause more divisiveness in the campaign. They urgently need to stop dumb forced errors to prevent handing the Right ammunition. John Tamihere’s leadership and discipline is urgently required behind the scenes to ensure that.
The Greens should make their move against James Shaw as quickly as possible so as to blood Chloe before the campaign proper starts and be clear that they tactically will use bottom lines negotiated with the Maori Party to force immediate change that will be passed within 100 days.
If they can’t present an urgent united front with clearly defined goals to win back hope for change, then they will be forced to play the same scare tactics the Right will and use fear of the ACT/National agenda to grudge vote for the Left again.
Because Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020, they had no real 100 day legislative agenda to ram through and as such have been stymied ever step by the Wellington Bureaucracy.
Jacinda may be kind and she may really want transformative change, but if you don’t come to Wellington with a clear plan as to how to force the Bureaucracy to implement your manifesto, then transformative change becomes a virtue signal of aspiration rather than actual policy.
Kindness becomes Neo-Kindness that aggrieves rather than inspires.
The Greens and Māori Party must avoid this by clearly telling voters now what they will force Labour to pass in the first 100 days of a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government so that the Wellington Bureaucracy can be thwarted. Unfortunately the Greens are socially connected at the hip to the Wellington Bureaucracy and have all the offensive capacity of slow growing moss.
The last chance for Left progressive policy is a list of bottom line first 100 day laws to force Labour into being more Bernie Sanders than cautious Grant and Jacinda are confident to attempt.
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: 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 taxand first $20 000.
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.
…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.
Curveball:
The curveball here is Winston and NZ First, if he gets over 5%, he will be the Kingmaker and Trevor Mallard’s bizarre desire to trespass an institution like Winston will sow a bitter harvest at negotiation time.
Winston could bring a genuine isolationist stance to NZ politics by reviving Muldoon’s Think Big anti-free market economic sovereignty. At a time of global financial collapse, economic nationalism will be extremely populist.
Conclusion:
The far left and far right have enormous pent up political tension that will rupture once Labour or National are dependent on their numbers for a majority.
In these highly polarised times that has the potential to create an outcome that is hated regardless of which side wins.
Ultimately it’s the economy stupid.
If the economy falters as badly as it likely to, we will trigger a whole bunch of social tipping points that all have the potential to explode and cause considerable damage.
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