Party politics, democracy….

Bah humbug!!!!

I don’t like Nationals politics. I make no excuses for this statement. Ruth Richardson, Bill Birch, Bill English, Paula Bennett, Max Bradford, Dr Coleman, Dr Reti, Christopher Bishop, Simeon Brown, Nicola Willis, Louise Upston, and Tama Potaka are all quintessential National MP’s representing the antithesis of compassion and empathy within a public role that both qualities should surely embrace.

All to different degrees during their tenures introducing punitive legislation that disadvantaged those already existing in the shadow-lands of society, poor, low waged and disenfranchised. Māori and women especially targeted, although all would have us believe different.

Having noted these individuals and this party it would be remiss to leave this list of brickbats to one party alone. Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, Michael Bassett, David Cagill, Geoffrey Palmer, Mike Moore, Stan Rogers, Trevor De Cleene, Phil Goff, Stuart Nash, Kelvin Davis are all Labour Party recalcitrants, professing allegiance to the principles of labourism, but in reality being closer to Friedmanesque libertarian, globalist trickledown monetarist theories pursuing policies that favoured capital over labour.

These latter names will forever remain traitors within any Labour movement. In plain sight of an electorate, they lied from the very start. Stripped our country bare of the very wealth which, had it been spread more evenly, should have raised everyone’s standard of living. Instead the assets and wealth given to overseas interests and a very few rich New Zealanders. Those shouting loudest today about any idea of resetting this economic narrative are the very people who benefitted most under Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.

To peruse the Prime Ministers during this period is to be confronted by list of EXTREMELY ordinary dullards, not one of whom it could be demonstrated believed in the promotion of either social justice or the enactment of a progressive economic narrative that favoured labour over capital. David Lange a pompous fool who wrecked the education system with tomorrows schools all while huffing and puffing about the nuclear breath of others, Palmer and Moore two more monetarist apologists, Jim Bolger the spud from Te kuititi whose only real achievement has been to saddle the country with Winston (I don’t care where as long as I’m mayor, as long as I’m mayor I don’t care where) Peters, oh…..as well as releasing the rabid Richardson against beneficiaries! Jenny Shipley, a blip, her only moment being our first unelected female PM having first successfully baked Bolger in tin foil. Helen Clarke’s time saw Labour move so far to the right that even Jim Anderson was forced to leave Labour to create the Alliance Party and sheesh we all saw how badly that turned out! Bill English who rorted handsome funds from the public purse before realising he really lived and worked in Wellington and not back on the farm in Dipton, had to play bridesmaids to the bucket list wannabe Key determined only to get a knighthood and a new flag, before being given a hospital pass at the last minute, only to be winded by a crippling kick in the balls by Winston First as he was diving over the try line!!!!! Angry Andy pipped at the post by Jacinda Ardern who along with Grant Robertson did nothing transformative other than to reinstate the concept of kindness. And if I hear one more chorus of “oh but so much more could have been done if not for Covid “ I’ll stick knitting needles in my ears. Not declaring there would be no CGT during her premiership would have been a bloody good start!

And here we are now. With another fatuous, wannabe narcissist, propped up by two extremist fantasists. The five riders of the apocalypse reduced to the three monkeys; hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Luxon, Seymour, and Peters. Could there be a worse marriage?

Anyone watching politics dispassionately would have to conclude there is no party system in New Zealand just a continuum of extremism extending in either direction. We call it left and right. But it could just as easily be termed up and down, in and out, black and white, Labourism and Capitalism. Colonialist and indigenous,

Whatever the choice, the two ends of this continuum are diametrically opposite narratives.

One, the raison d’être, a celebration of the individual and the amassing of personal wealth and self aggrandisement to the exclusion of all other considerations.

The other a desire to redistribute wealth more communally and equitably. Including public control of the means of production and recognising that the profit belongs to a collective NOT capital.

The wonderful trick enacted over these 40 years has been the creation of an incessant white noise convincing the stupid into believing capital has been hamstrung by a rapacious, greedy and undeserving workforce, where the absolute opposite has been true.

Don’t take my word for it. Any statistic you care to research regarding unionism and membership, conditions of service, wage differential between labour and management will indicate an exponential shift of wealth from the many to the few. It will reveal the removal of national pay awards, along with the automatic right to collective bargaining. Conditions of service trimmed and reduced to bare minimums. Fair pay agreements legislation torn up. And most recently pay equity claims thrown out without any consultation with unions or public discussion.

On this continuum at one extreme will be found a desire to pay as little as possible to maximise profit. It will involve the socialisation of business costs incurred ( either by top up family support to low income earners paid for by the tax payer, very low corporation tax thresholds, and the socialised costs of infrastructure to support businesses) BUT!!! the privatisation of all profit.

Also at this end is to discovers the denial or rewriting of history. Simplistic solutions to complex questions. A chorus that Māori are a privileged race and all attempts to seek their rights amounts to a grievance ‘gravy train’ to suck the life blood from hardworking kiwis. (Since the Waitangi tribunal started providing financial recompense the TOTAL amount repaid to Māori amounts to $2.7 Billion, less than this government gave back to private landlords(sic) this year!!! ) Warnings against the ‘Maorification’ of Aotearoa New Zealand. A determination to claim victim hood against a Māori population that want nothing more than to be treated with the same mana, and respect in law and customary tikanga as their European counterparts.

I have a special vitriol reserved for ACT and New Zealand First. If ever two parties were the epitome of right wing extremist parliamentarians, completely captured by external often foreign interests it would be impossible to imagine a more fitting description of these two.

The shameless MP’s currently serving in Luxon’s cabinet; David Seymour, Brook Van Velden, Nicole McKee, Karen Chhour, Winston Peters Shane Jones and Casey Costello representing barely 15% of the electoral party vote between them are a pack of extremists that any informed public or non-partisan fourth estate should be spit-roasting alive for their menadacity, lack of accountability and downright anti social politics.

There is absolutely nothing redeemable in any utterance, voting positions or legislation passed by these sociopaths. There are, and remain, completely oblivious to the plight of those kiwis struggling at the bottom of our society. Only Karen Chhour, by virtue of an arguably misplaced and ignorant belief that her personal experience can of itself shape national policy, can be pardoned from this despicable bunch, if only because she appears unaware of how totally unsuitable she is for either her ministerial position or of being an MP in the first place. Mind you bed-leg Sam Uffindell and Maureen Pugh would equally fit this descriptor.

So what can we find at the other end of the of the continuum? Very little! Labour ministers by and large are centrist chasers of consensus and the middle ground. Which is to say they are collectively terrified of rocking this neoliberal narrative that has grabbed middle and low income workers by their wallet for over 40 years.

The result of this inaction has seen the political landscape and narrative move so far to the right that recent Labour governments could more reasonably be classed as centre right! Ms Ardern, bless her heart had no stomach for redressing the status quo and young Chippy, the boy from the Hutt made good, appears to be far too obsessed with personal ambition to be derailed by any lurching extremes within the described continuum. His one saving grace…..so far…..is a complete refusal to entertain NZF as a coalition partner…..but we shall see. A sparring partner on Substack observed of him, ‘once a student politician, always a student politician’.

To finish we are presented with The NZ Green Party and Te Pati Māori both determined in their own way to upset the apple cart of cosy indifference firstly towards Māori kāwanatanga, Tikanga , and equal status as a Tiriti partner, and secondly to kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga and a move towards a more egalitarian and equity based society.

Given that the top 50% of households held just over 93% of total wealth, and the top 10% held over 51% it is a bizarre reality that more than half of New Zealand have absolutely nothing to lose by supporting these two ‘extremist parties’ and booting the other two into the dark pages of history.

It remains a sad reality that as a nation we are not as altruistic as we would like to think, and that the majority of our current Labour shadow ministers lack the courage, vision or intellectual rigour necessary to implement transformative policies that will in any real sense restore labour to primacy over capital.