How Labour will kill all our progressive hopes in 2021 and still win 2023

32
2269

The middle class woke Spinoff have just realised what TDB has been pointing out for over 3 years now, Jacinda’s cautious domestic agenda won’t be progressive at all.

Hilariously The Spinoff can only see things through the lens of identity politics so it doesn’t mention class anywhere in this opinion piece about progressive NZ politics which kinda highlights why Jacinda can get away with identity politics virtue signals rather than class based transformative change.

Jacinda and Grant  are heroic when it comes to big calls in the midst of crisis, but when it comes to actual progressive reform, they are still peddling tinkering rather than transformative change.

The first baby steps of this new Government was to endorse a racist drug law, rule out a wealth tax, rule out lifting benefits before Christmas and refuse to mandate 10 sick days now.

Labour have bewilderingly locked us into a vast debt trap to fund trickle down economics by printing billions and instead of loaning it to the Government to rebuild our infrastructure, poorly funded public services and refund our welfare state, Labour have green lighted it going to corporate banks to fuel property speculators in the hope the newly inflated paper wealthy spend that false sense of prosperity in the real economy to help the little guy.

Once again Labour use free market mechanics to try and fix a housing market wrecked by neoliberalism. KiwiBuild has become KiwiSpeculate!

If only Labour’s NeoKindness could help beneficiaries, renters, prisoners, the working class, kids in poverty, first time home owners & cannabis users the way it helps property speculators.

Labour have spent so much time saving NZ from Covid they have had no transformative vision as to what to do next, luckily this isn’t the first time a Labour leader was forced to be transformative.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The left love Michael Joseph Savage. Every Labour MP who wishes to push their left wing credentials have photos of him hanging in every electorate office and Minister’s room.

Savage is lauded as the creator of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression.

He was swamped when he went into public as NZers gushed over how he had saved them all.

The most hilarious truth, provided by insights from John A Lee who served in Savage’s Cabinet and was the anti-Phil Twyford of his day, (in that he actually built Houses) paints a very different picture from the mythology the left have given Savage .

The truth is that Savage was incredibly centrist and not a radical at all. Backed up by the neoliberal Walter Nash and conservative manipulator Peter Fraser, Savage did all he could to stop transformative change, it was actually Savage’s Caucus who forced his hand repeatedly to be transformative.

The exact same dynamics are at play inside Jacinda’s Labour Government.

When there is a crisis, the Prime Minister shines, but when it comes to domestic policy, she is super cautious to the point of being timid.

Her decision to rule out revoking a racist drug law simply because 50.7% want to continue supporting the racist drug law is an example of this timidness.

Her decision to rule out a capital gains tax, a wealth tax and refusal to increase benefits are also evidence of it.

The counter argument is that she needs to hold the centre, but if you aren’t going to be transformative with an outright majority, when the hell are you going to be transformative?

The reality is there won’t be transformative change unless we the people demand it, or if the Caucus demands it, or if a crisis demands it.

Just as it was with Michael Joseph Savage.

Luckily for Labour the right is imploding.

National were seen to care more about the economy than the people during Covid and their insipid cowardice by turning on Simon Bridges to replace him with Muller has forever shown voters their venal self interest masquerading as right wing philosophy.

As National have floundered, ACT have looked stronger.

The problem is ACT are so right wing…

  • Cut and freeze the Minimum wage
  • Interest back on all student loans
  • No Kiwsaver subsidy
  • Cancel winter energy payment
  • Dump all climate crisis legislation
  • no more best start payments for families with new borns
  • cut welfare payments
  • no tax credits for research and development
  • cuts to working for families
  • $7b a year cut in public services
  • Abolish Maori seats
  • Abolish Human Rights Commission

…that the idea of them + National being the answer to 2023’s issues could only be true if we have been invaded by UFOs and they are demanding all members of the Government must be immediately handed over as human sacrifices to our new Alien overlords.

In THAT scenario, voting ACT + National in makes sense.

Outside that scenario, not so much.

Once left wing and centrist voters realise just how far right ACT really are, the fear of keeping them from Government will outweigh whatever sin Jacinda has committed over the previous 3 years.

ACT’s sudden and uncritical rise will hurt National and win Labour the 2023 election.

It’s easy to cry wolf when the wolf is a brain hungry zombie dog hunting for human flesh in a premature infants ward.

So Labour can continue to be timid and allow the polarisation on the Right to keep centrist voters sticking with Jacinda for 2023.

Peace ain’t coming because the problem with peace is that you can’t make no money from it.

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.

32 COMMENTS

  1. Not a bad prediction this early in Martyn. Although it probably won’t be a big landslide. As I travel around I see and hear dissatisfaction and disappointment from people such as train guards and bus drivers to wage slaves in horticulture, cleaners, cafes and retail – with only a few exceptions where people find good employers.
    It seems strange to me that Labour’s neo-liberal flock back in the 80s made more progress and quicker when implementing their agenda – and really there is no reason why it can’t be undone just as quickly.
    Come 2023 there’ll still be
    – a homeless emergency (oops! ‘crisis’)
    – wage slaves and people working 2 and 3 jobs to survive with a number of employers ripping them off, and gig economy jobs going unchecked
    – prisoners being abused (probably by what is a minority?? of ‘screws’), and obstruction of those trying to do their jobs
    – a huge meth and gang problem because of things like patching over and the benefits of the bling
    – big hospital waiting lists and infrastructure only just starting to catch up, but still crumbling
    – a media divide (as in what we used to call the digital divide) that has to survive of begging and subscriptions and which will only serve to reinforce various partisan bubbles and echo chambers)
    – a number in the middle and senior ranks of our public service (central and local gummint) who may understand what their roles are, but who completely misunderstand their purpose (there’s a bit of a hint in the name) *
    – obesity and children and adults with rotten or no teeth
    – growing addictions of various kinds as people seek escape from their lives (which if Labour was smart, it might realise they could be the ones to attract back as voters)
    – SFA progress on the environment
    – one or two more reports from the likes of the U.N chastising NuZull over various issues
    – just as many Treaty and BORA breaches
    – duopolies and monopolies in various sectors that the Commcomm should never have allowed
    – etc., etc., etc.
    There’ll probably still be an Immigration Industrial Complex too, which along with a welfare system will attempt to justify the deserving and undeserving casualties.
    Which just goes to show the mess gNats and its disciples have left behind, BUT it also shows the little progress Labour has made.

    * (Funny – as in strange, not as in haha) that The Spinoff has a book review by Simon Bridges which is worth a read – the book even more so:
    https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/13-01-2021/simon-bridges-as-trumps-mob-storms-the-capitol-heres-the-book-to-tells-us-how-we-got-here/

    A quote from the review:
    “The people who occupy our institutions increasingly understand those institutions not as moulds that ought to shape their behavior and character but as platforms that allow them greater individual exposure and enable them to hone their personal brands.”
    And what Bridges takes from the author’s analysis isn’t such a bad interpretation either.

    I suspect things are still going to have to get worse before they get better and the natives get restless enough. I’ll certainly be voting according to conscience and the commitment Labour has shown rather than party – that’s if I’m not tucked up in some rest home with some poor wage slave wiping my geriatric arse . Least worst options aren’t going to cut it, and I imagine if people could afford to, a few more strikes might start to act as a cow prod.

    • Agree with all your outlined problems, OWT but you omitted the one that will really make the shit hit the fan – climate change!
      By the northern winter of 2023 Arctic sea ice (or ice arches) will have vanished, triggering massive habitat loss for all species on earth.
      And because this won’t happen overnight, all of 2022 and 2023 will be convulsed with climate induced problems worldwide.
      New Zealand might literally be ‘fighting them on the beaches’ by the end of 2023!

      • 13oC yesterday evening, with very cold rain. And it’s midsummer!

        The massive overheating of the Earth by industrially-generated gases is leading to wild swings in weather and humungous storm systems that ravage frail human infrastructure.

        We’ve been ”dodging the bullets’ since around 2016 but our days of dodging the bullets are numbered. The inexorable rise in ocean heat content is both disturbing and unstoppable, and will lead to even faster Planetary Meltdown over coming years, as you have pointed out.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_heat_content

        Less ice: more incoming heat absorbed. And with the thermal gradient between the Poles and the Equator diminished, the Jest Streams no longer restrain movement of freezing polar air the way they used to. So wild swings in temperature and freezing rain in summer.

        Needless to say, the effect on horticulture will not be good.

        This has all been indicated for decades, yet our politicians still insist on sabotaging the future of THEIR OWN CHILDREN!

      • Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
        (Suffice to say that if I’d started on that I’d never have stopped because that Immigration Industrial Complex made it too hard for the very people we need to stay – to the point of state-sanctioned abuse. NuZull apparently doesn’t need the kind of people that feature in a Deutsche Welle series – they’re too much of a demographic risk. We’re rather the develop develop developers and growth growth growth merchants and ‘influencers’ in that space, going forward. They’re going to “Save the Economy” apparently /sarc)

  2. The world is changing faster than the criminals and clowns in parliament (or the uninformed/misinformed populace) realise.

    Every day that passes bring us one day closer to collapse, led by the US. ‘Yet it still comes as a great surprise to everyone when doing more of what’s failed spectacularly ends up collapsing the whole rotten structure.’

    ‘Designed To Fail, Failure Guaranteed
    January 15, 2021

    Yet it still comes as a great surprise to everyone when ‘doing more of what’s failed spectacularly’ ends up collapsing the whole rotten structure.

    Systems and nations are designed to fail without anyone even noticing: nobody set out to design the current broken system to fail at critical points, but now failure can’t be avoided because the incentive structure has locked in embedded processes that enrich self-serving cartels and insiders at the expense of the nation and its populace.

    Nobody chose America’s insanely perverse healthcare system–it arose from a set of initial conditions that generated perverse incentives to do more of what’s failing and protect the processes that benefit cartels and insiders at the expense of everyone else.

    In other words, the system that was intended to benefit all ends up benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

    The same question can be asked of America’s broken higher education system: would any sane person choose a system that enriches insiders by indenturing students via massive student loans (i.e. forcing them to become debt serfs)?

    Students and their parents certainly wouldn’t choose the current broken system, but the lenders reaping billions of dollars in profits would choose to keep it, and so would the under-assistant deans earning a cool $200K+ for “administering” some embedded process that has effectively nothing to do with actual learning.

    The academic ronin a.k.a. adjuncts earning $35,000 a year (with little in the way of benefits or security) for doing much of the actual teaching wouldn’t choose the current broken system, either.

    Now that the embedded processes are generating profits and wages, everyone benefiting from these processes will fight to the death to retain and expand them, even if they threaten the system with financial collapse and harm the people who the system was intended to serve.

    How many student loan lenders and assistant deans resign in disgust at the parasitic system that higher education has become? The number of insiders who refuse to participate any longer is signal noise, while the number who plod along, either denying their complicity in a parasitic system of debt servitude and largely worthless diplomas (i.e. the system is failing the students it is supposedly educating at enormous expense) or rationalizing it is legion.

    If I was raking in $200,000 annually from a system I knew was parasitic and counter-productive, I would find reasons to keep my head down and just “do my job,” too.

    At some point, the embedded processes become so odious and burdensome that those actually providing the services start bailing out of the broken system. We’re seeing this in the number of doctors and nurses who retire early or simply quit to do something less stressful and more rewarding.

    These embedded processes strip away autonomy, equating compliance with effectiveness even as the processes become increasingly counter-productive and wasteful. The typical mortgage documents package is now a half-inch thick, a stack of legal disclaimers and stipulations that no home buyer actually understands (unless they happen to be a real estate attorney).

    How much value is actually added by these ever-expanding embedded processes?

    By the time the teacher, professor or doctor complies with the curriculum / “standards of care”, there’s little room left for actually doing their job. But behind the scenes, armies of well-paid administrators will fight to the death to keep the processes as they are, no matter how destructive to the system as a whole.

    This is how systems and the nations that depend on them fail. Meds skyrocket in price, student loans top $1 trillion, F-35 fighter aircraft are double the initial cost estimates and so on, and the insider solutions are always the same: just borrow another trillion to keep the broken system afloat for another quarter.

    Yet it still comes as a great surprise to everyone when doing more of what’s failed spectacularly ends up collapsing the whole rotten structure.

    Consider a spacecraft as a metaphor for a system which is designed not to fail but that can fail anyway. There are two basic ways the spacecraft can fail: a single essential component can fail, or a single failure can trigger a domino-like cascade which leads to the entire craft failing.

    If the craft’s single oxygen tank ruptures, the crew dies. 99% of the spacecraft is still working perfectly, but the system failed in its primary purpose: keeping the crew alive.

    If an electrical failure causes a cascade of subsystem failures, you end up with the same result: a powerless craft and a dead crew.

    But 99% of the system is working just fine is little solace to the expired crew.’

    https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan21/designed-to-fail1-21.html

    • AFKTT
      “In other words, the system that was intended to benefit all ends up benefiting the few at the expense of the many.”

      Who said that the system was to benefit all? Even before class society emerged (when there was sufficient surplus to enable it) social production was not intended, but an extension of nature. The only thing that was collectively was the daily and seasonal effort to conserve energy/increase the efficiency of labour time used to reproduce the kinship group, by developing the tools to harness nature’s (non-human) energy.

      Once that development produced a surplus, intention then turned to conserving the labour time of the few at the expense of the many. The shaman and warlord was born and with it the class system. After this gigantic leap, class societies went from exploiting slaves to peasants to wage workers. All by the few. But manifestly not for the good of . Those who became the rulers had to justify their wealth in the name of gods, projecting their ruling class power onto the gods in the common interest of .

      The capitalist then is not an aberration, it follows this historic law – the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. The capitalist ruling class has the advantage over previous ones that it doesn’t need gods, as capitalism itself produces its own ideology in the very process of production where the act of exploitation of labour to produce surplus-labour and profit appears to be and . If we are all individuals buying and selling commodities, then the worker who sells his/her labour power is no different to the capitalist who buys it. Marx’s theory of .

      So if the ideology of capital is the , then the only breakdown is the failure of the market resulting from unequal exchange of commodities. This reduces to monopoly power to pay a price less than the value of the commodity. Naturally capitalists always blame workers for this disruption. Marx exploded this fetish, proving that was the only commodity that produced more value than its own value – hence the secret of profit extracted at the point of production, not its fetish in exchange.

      If the ruling idea of capitalism is the fetish that the system is natural and perfect, and only breaks down when the market malfunctions – it leads to all varieties of reformist ideology from Proudhon to Piketty.

      This is why Marx’s discovery of labour-power (a child’s discovery hidden by millennia of ruling class obfuscation) proves that capitalism as a never was to benefit , but to justify in the name of all, the benefit of the ruling class.

      Once he made that discovery Marx had the key he needed to unravel the apparent complexity of capitalism as one determined by laws of motion that would lead to its eventual demise as it exhausted its material base by destroying nature.

      It remains to show how understanding the scientific method used by Marx creates the opportunity to become class conscious and organise the power of the producers to end the long history of class society and embark on building the classless society – communism.

      • Charles Hugh Smith was particularly referring to healthcare and education when he wrote ‘“In other words, the system that was intended to benefit all ends up benefiting the few at the expense of the many.” People like Semmelweis or Florence Nightingale surely had the welfare of the many mind, as did the founders of the [British] NHS.

        What happened in America was that the services became privatised and then taken over by corporations with profit in mind. The more sick [people there are, the more profit there is for corporations. The more students are in debt, the more profit there is for corporations (banks). Thus, there is talk of the sickness industry in the US. And people being financial crippled by medical expenses.

        National tried that game with charges for hospital stays…but ran into such resistance they backed off.

        It can be argued that the only reason we have a state education system is to make make ‘proles’ more useful to the empire.

        The real point of the CHS article (and others he has written) is that there is now more profit to be made from financialisation than from delivery of services, and ‘everyone’ is waiting for the next round of ‘free money’ created out of thin air by the Fed to be poured into the system to prop up dysfunctional arrangements a little longer. Just as is the case in NZ and most other industrialised nations, including China.

        To my knowledge, Cuba is one of the few places where healthcare and education are free and the people who provide them are earning little more than the average wage. And the standards are extremely high.

        The situation may have changed but the last I read on the matter, Cuba organised personal visits by medical workers to homes needing Covid-19 assistance on a daily basis, and had the pandemic under control.

        The problem with communism is that it is generally neither classless nor entirely equitable because there will always be those who want more than their fair share, and party officials notoriously become corrupt and exploitive. Mao’s Great Famine demonstrated that, when the sick and pregnant women were denied food because they couldn’t work in the fields. It’s amazing how quickly compassion goes out he window when there are shortages.

        The problem with the present NZ society is that the populous has been trained to be selfish and greedy, and to think they have the right to all sorts of things that are actually only privileges facilitated by cheap and abundant energy that won’t be cheap and abundant much longer.

  3. I can’t disagree with your assumptions regarding 2023. Simply put if the economy keeps chugging away then (little) Aotearoa will continue to exist in their debt-fueled bubble. There are some headwinds coming though and a significant economic downturn and/or covid outbreak is the only thing that could cripple this government.

    At the moment all the right offers is the same policies but with the promise of better financial management. This is still a shit sandwich so little point in the sheeple changing their vote. There remains no political party with a post covid defined strategy for NZ economically. If you look at where we are right now it’s no a large leap in logic that over the next 2-3 years we go into a period of sustained stagflation. The great Asian immigration ponzi scheme ain’t going to be our savior this time.

  4. Of our PM,”…when it comes to domestic policy, she is super cautious to the point of being timid”. Hows missing altogether sound?

    During her absence over the Christmas New Years break how much have house/property prices risen? Her holiday break would not be an issue, IF, Labour had a plan. They don’t. Just dumbly going wherever the market takes them is their policy.

    Thing of it is this, this crisis will worsen and the worse it gets the bigger the mess to sort out. It will do one of two things, rises will continue unabated because of the sea of cheap money, guaranteed capital gain and no interference whatsoever from our government, actually, passive encouragement.

    The other is as affordability dives it will march off over a tipping point and burst the bubble. In the interim the social cost of this greed will mount and turn poisonous. The consequences of which are not pretty and that will be vote damaging.

    Housing with Labour under Jacinda is just like Coronavirus and Trump.

    Hence I don’t think Labour are safe. Although the opposition are awful, voting Labour is more or less the same as voting National without the toxic personalities. A limp National. We now know Jacinda was never transformative and she must of thanked every God known that Winston was the whipping boy for being a hand brake, making her look holier than Mother Teresa, when in reality she was the brick wall to progress.

    And now I know that, I for one ain’t voting for that or her government again unless someone breaks them out of their collective coma!

  5. A Labour government is bad but it is the lesser of evils. The alternatives?
    A National and ACT government that will re-introduce slavery for all on welfare benefits and privatize all health services with the added advantage of legislation to euthanize those incapable of working. It will reinvent New Zealand as a playground for the super wealthy while the poor are herded into hobo camps.
    Education and mobilization of the masses could lead to the realization of the old Labour movement’s dream. A revolution that brings about a genuine socialist state, an equal society where everyone has access to proper health services, comprehensive education and safe, healthy housing. Unfortunately social media gossip addicts and celebrity worshippers are unlikely to ever get off their bums and do this.
    Roll on extinction – time for our replacement species

  6. Reasonable prediction from our esteemed Editor in the face of the evidence, but, that is not the future 50% at least, and probably many more of New Zealanders want or need. Aotearoa is a tale of two cities as ever–property owners vs not owners! Student loan debtors vs free education cruisers.

    Some of the grateful switch voters probably would actually expect Labour to move on benefits, clean up MSD, tax the well off more, and build mega numbers of state houses and apartments, and let the working class “off the leash” with liberal strike laws.

    Direct action is the only thing that will shift this Govt. hint–Ihumātao, hint–pay rises achieved by membership action. Time for occupation of empty houses, rent freeze, reinstate climate strikes all over, and a joint CTU/NGO campaign on welfare and workers rights. (Whats that CTU is piss weak? Well union members, get active and change it to a class fighting organisation again as per the old Jim Knox FOL days).

    • Yup; the spilt now is not between the workers and the bosses… it is the landless peasant renters versus the propertied class.

      • I almost agreed with Castro! and he is significantly right in that many people see housing and property as the significant social division of our time.

        Different housing standards, among many other inequalities, are more a division within the working class, the old “aristocracy of Labour” as some once called better off workers, and aspirational workers who are rewarded for identifying with the employing class rather than their own. But there is no doubt that a lot of suffering occurs as the owners and renters and homeless jostle for position. Bosses love such times when the focus is off them, and capital gains are where it is at rather than a united working class pressuring employers for better living standards.

        In class terms, capitalist ownership and appropriation of socially produced wealth remains the major cause of exploitation and blighted lives, and the bourgeois Parliament enforces those property relations with a legal superstructure and armed force if required.

        • The Renters party is the new Workers party… ’cause the Wage Slave Labour Party is absolutely not of the “left”… it is of the propertied class and its interests…

  7. replace ufo and alien with – CCP
    not so far detatched is it , Hong Kong will tell you .

    Ban any one person who owns a property from buying another .

  8. Ardern is John Key with a toothier smile and yet the left love her. But for what exactly? Her ability to say the right thing whilst delivering the opposite? Or her ability to get all of us passionate and excited about true transformation whilst further entrenching neoliberalism and achieving nothing for those who need it the most. Time we all stopped drinking the Ardern Koolaid and woke to the fact that she could easily be a National PM. Stop praising her ineptitude and start calling her out on it. Only when her own side is pushing back on her will we see real change. Come on, wake the hell up people!

  9. Jacinda Adern’s government isn’t the one at fault. Sure, there are factions within Aderns Labour who are arseholes, deviants and crooks. But that’s politics. There will always be those kinds of people.
    The truthful problem is that Adern’s Labour government, like government’s before it, and her, who are well intended and good hearted are immediately hobbled by those previous governments deviant shenaggans dating back to when the national party first drew its first foul breath. Back to the early 1920’s once elected.
    Put simply, a few good ol’ urban boys figured out a way to make a shit ton of money without getting up off the whores. ( Apologies to any working women.)
    All they had to do was wrap our farmers, our primary industry food exporting farmers, up in debt then the rest was easy. And still is. Nothing, has changed.
    So we must ask? How does a modern, urbane Labour government address such an institutionalised swindle?
    Perhaps the answer’s within the old truism; “The Truth shall set you free” .
    Just imagine that? Imagine of Adern coming forward with a plan to investigate the last one hundred years of our trade relationships, of who went where for why and when and of who made billions while our farmers buy a new car then suddenly everyone’s going on within our entirely corrupt MSM about the rich cocky making thousands.
    We’re an extremely lucky country. We are a talented, intelligent, capable, hard working and creative 5 million people on a highly productive and multiple-vital-resources rich land and yet we struggle against a tide of deviancy and lies as we must walk past the homeless and know that in those unfortunate communities there are hungry Kiwi kids from poverty ravaged houses, if they’re lucky, trying to get a schooling.
    How the fuck is that a scene man?
    Here’s a sample of how they head-fuck us in my opinion. Seriously, you’ll laugh. You’ll think I’m a nut. A Qanon-esque nutter.
    This is an attempt at a traffic safety strategy. Great. Awesome. But even if we reduce the road speeds to 20 kph we’ll still see mopes crash into each other.
    I think the real reason for making people do this or that in that sickly and banal way is to force upon us a covert and unconscious reaction in our minds to aquiese to authority.
    Those whom have preyed upon us for generations must make sure our thinking never goes beyond the television, the internet, the wine bottle, the Briscoes sales, the banal pap, the beige bedroom, the feeble print media showing gleaming toothed leafy suburb types in their frilly bliss
    RNZ
    “Lower speed limits on some state highways frustrate locals”
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/434751/lower-speed-limits-on-some-state-highways-frustrate-locals

  10. The first Labour govt led by MJS achieved a wide range of groundbreaking progressive social reforms but one major misstep was the omission of adult dental care from the Public Healthcare system. The medical fraternity made the passage of this “Free” healthcare as difficult as possible. None more so than the NZ Dentists Association who in a standoff with Savage called his bluff and as a country we have paid a terrible price. Dr Juliet Gray a special care dentist at Canterbury DHB said, “We are appalling, we are shameful in NZ, shameful. Only 1/3 of NZers regularly access dental care. Most people can’t afford it. No other country of similar wealth treats oral health that way.” Both Prof Murray Thomson and Assoc. Prof Johnathan Broadbent of the Otago Uni Faculty of Dentistry have highlighted the unaffordability and inequities in the adult dental care system. A majority Labour Govt., without hesitation should be addressing and righting a wrong that has caused immeasurable pain and suffering to generations of Kiwis. If a Labour Govt. managed to somehow make this happen they would be forever remembered by the NZ people as being transformative.

    • Absolutely!

      And the weak-willed Adern government won’t even move against the tooth-rot industries that promote the ingestion of masses of sugary foods and sugary drinks.

  11. No need, look, not ever, the knowin, is compulsory union,and care knowing, permanent. Who me no need to undestand and , Unionism is not past its compulsory as been not past, can its compulsory be here again.

  12. The first thing Biden is doing is unwinding all the repulsive Trump legislation passed over the last 4 years.
    In this country Labour and National have a pact to not rescind the previous governments legislation, no matter how evil.
    Why is that? Why have they formed a pact to act in unison, and who do they represent.
    It is certainly not kiwis.
    What will happen in the term of this government is growing civil unrest, and growing government intolerance and use of force against the populace.
    They will fail, as they are showing they are not capable of succeeding under their current order of rule, and the public will dismiss them from power and vote in an even more authoritarian National/Act coalition.
    Jacinda should use the nest 2 years to push through as much reformative law as she can, but she won’t.
    So the question always comes back to who is pulling the strings.
    It is not political party donors, though a few of NZ’s 100 rich listers are amongst it, so why are we not rebelling against the influence of these people destroying NZ.

Comments are closed.