There is a lot of pain on the Left at a sense Jacinda has failed us, that the transformative change passed us all by.

The screeds of minute extras that have been held up by Labour as evidence of their attempts all pale into nothing when the MSD, IRD and WINZ clawbacks are all taken out as inflation explodes.

Yes Jacinda saved us from the Covid War, but she’s losing the Covid Peace.

I think that most voters don’t understand how NZ politics work and they don’t understand how Jacinda is failing when Labour have an MMP majority.

They are legitimate questions and are valid ones, how can a Party with an unprecedented MMP majority still seem to do sweet fuck all on the big issues confronting us as a society, economy and culture.

It starts at the 2017 election.

In an act of desperation and true leadership, Andrew Little handed Jacinda the leadership months out from the 2017 election which was strategically designed to eliminate the Māori Party and United Future and on election night the specials and overseas vote weren’t counted leaving a deflated Jacinda to tell the country we hand’t won when in fact the specials and overseas vote were always going to go our way and I believed Winston was going to go with us.

The strategy of knocking out National support parties won us the 2017 election but because  no one in the Labour leadership expected to win, there was no 100 day legislative agenda to ram through the moment you get into Parliament and if you don’t do that, the Wellington Bureaucracy will kill off any of your reform agenda for their own interests.

This is what most NZers don’t understand about NZ politics, winning power is VERY different from managing power. If you don’t arrive on day one with with a clear legislative agenda and enough mana to intimidate the Wellington Bureaucracy, you get nothing done.

Representative Democracy in NZ is a masquerade so that you will participate and give it legitimacy, the truth is that the Wellington Bureaucracy runs the country and their middle class neoliberal pandering decides policy implementation, not the feckless and easily manipulated Ministers.

Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020, so they’ve 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 tax and 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.

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