Oh Jesus, how crass…
Another public holiday ‘a luxury we can’t really afford’ – Luxon
National says Aotearoa “can’t really afford” to add another public holiday as the country gets closer to celebrating Matariki in June, while Labour has hit out at the suggestion another national holiday should be removed.
…Matariki is a cultural gift to the nation from Māori and should be celebrated as the growth and maturity of our country, to use bullshit cost evaluations to justify cancelling another public holiday shows the hollow emptiness that is the National Party.
We have public holidays as the privilege of being in a democracy.
I’ve always believed that public holidays should be mandatory.
I care deeply about the need for us all to put down tools as citizens on specific days and all of us venture out into our amazing public spaces and be friendly with one another.
The importance of our civility in public towards one another, the importance of being tolerant of each other while sharing the same space and the importance to actually stop working and enjoy doing nothing but spend time with our family, friends and whanau would do more to building that sense of nationhood and community than any other social policy.
As citizens, we have earned the right to have days off, and we need to hold onto this right and understand it is the universal application that is so important. It’s the need to share our beaches and out door spaces together on these days that builds bonds between families and groups of people who would never otherwise meet in their busy 9-5, 5-9 lives.
For those public servants forced to work while the rest of us play, the media should be full of ‘spare a thought for’ type stories so that our public servants who must continue to staff essential services while the rest of us relax are given the respect and admiration they deserve for their selfless functions.
That sense of self identity and nationhood that we always whine about not being present during Waitangi Day takes effort and can’t simply be left up to the ‘free market’. The space where that national identity can take shape has to be universally applied in the form of mandatory public holidays and not left to be traded in by unscrupulous employers who if given half a chance would make ‘Hi Ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go’ the new National anthem.
The thousands of different interactions generated by us all respectfully sharing the same space together on set days would do more for our understanding of each other than a million co-governance referendums by ACT ever could!
What is the point of being a citizen in a democracy if we can’t enjoy the leisure of spending time outside in this glorious country? Are we really all wage slaves? Is that what a modern democracy has been denigrated to?
‘I-have-a-dream-to-work-every-hour-of-the-day-by-a-boss-who-is-screwing-me-over’ isn’t particularly inspirational is it?
Luxon’s bitter pettiness highlights the true values of a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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What Mr Luxon is seemingly unaware of is that public holidays are good for business, especially the hospitality, travel and local tourism sectors. Benefits of between $300 to $500 million across the board.
Mr Luxon is just jealous and really wants a “National Day” holiday…….he is bound to get one next election, if not before.
Kat
That’s a great argument. To improve NZs business turnover let’s just have 365 public holidays. Well done.
Another logical fallacy on your part SK – reductio ad absurdum.
What would benefit this country immensely is evolving our economic system away from failed neoliberal capitalism.
Mr “Give-me-a-handout-for-my-airline” is trying to sell the same failed policies of previous political hacks (of both parties).
Your devotion is slavish.
Thanks for the kind help Jase.
Yes let’s move the economic system away from NeoCap to one of total self sufficiency and profitability. Drill for oil, dig our own coal and useful minerals, start making electric cars and build our own planes. We are far to dependent on the whims of the outside world. First move would be to get rid of the Green Party and then we’re away…
Sour Unkraut is toeing the National and ACT Party line again. Eliminate NZ First, Maori Party and Greens, leaving Labour without a coalition party. National, ACT, Conservative Party and Pentecostal ‘megachurches’ want to vote, or intimidate and wipe Maori and Labour’s potential coalition partners out of the political landscape.
It’s flawed, racist thinking Sour Kraut. Get rid of Matariki and the Maori Seats – racist dog-whistle to the NACT bloc (National had a $600,000 fine for ‘Lose yourself! You’ll get triple, quadruple or quintuple the losses when you, National and ACT play the race card and ‘lose yourself’ again)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/95132686/national-party-loses-court-decision-on-use-of-eminemesque-song.
Maori are not the dumb savages your NACT Bloc of white, pale, stale males think they are. This racism is more likely to drive Maori towards Labour and the Greens than you think.
Do you think that Maori won’t see through your flawed white-privileged and paternalistic naïve thinking?
Unfortunately, David Seymour is also jumping on Sour Kraut’s and the National Party’s racist dog-whistle white bandwagon. Seymour is attacking co-governance with non-binding referendumb as ‘a bottom line’ for a coalition with National. ACT couldn’t and won’t ever get a coalition with Labour, NZ First or the Greens, so his bottom-line is an early “teapot moment” and https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/03/24/act-party-wants-referendum-on-co-governance-with-maori/
So, now National and ACT are seen as treating Maori as “bottom-feeders”, who ‘can’t think for themselves’.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/03/22/christopher-luxon-explains-his-bottom-feeding-comments/
And, I’m looking forward to Willie and David’s debates about co-governance.
National Party’s young Nats Hamish Eggstein and Emiliano Donnrumma didn’t get the memo to ‘not get caught attacking women’. They couldn’t even pull the old “Don’t you know who I am?” defense!
Can Sour Kraut sum up National’s attitude to women in politics in the lead-up to the 2023 election?
Tell me Sour Kraut, how are you not going to turn off women, brothers, fathers, partners, mothers and men from believing the negativity surrounding ‘women as leaders’ by your misogynistic young mates in the National Party?
i-am-eggstein-young-nat-jessee-mackenzie-admits-trolling-female-politicians-resigns-from-national-party.
Ask some of the “gewat women’ you work with Sour Kraut? Would love to hear how your ‘imaginary chats with ‘gewat women’ go about how women should give up pursuing ‘women as leaders in local and national politics’.
Sour Kraut, I guess you want great or ‘gewat’ women to be known as subservient as those in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, or ‘The Gloriavale Tales’?
No Green Party, Maori voting on the general role, no co-governance, women back in the kitchen. A perfect world for NACT and Sour Kraut?
Brilliant as always Mike. Cabbage’s response “National good, Labour bad, all Jacinda’s fault” ugh!
New Zealand is still relatively unproductive compared to most other Western countries. Our labour laws are very protective of the workers and allow employers to keep them on year after year with minimal training. That, coupled with generous holiday and leave entitlements, means that the academics and intellectuals amongst us get bored all too easily, resulting in so-called “brain drains” of well skilled and well educated citizens to other countries at fairly regular intervals. One solution could be to legislate for mandatory filing of training records, eg, the training would be conducted by employers to all skilled and unskilled employees on a regular basis; the training records would be passed from the employers to the Department of Labour; audits would be conducted by the Department of Labour, including spontaneous check-ups, investigations, and follow-ups from check-ups and investigations where necessary.
so more powers to a managerial class that it widely seen as incompetent…yeah that’s gonna help, NZ workers have low productivity because of lack of investment in NZ industry, we prefer property, working our people like dogs and not outmoded unions but outmoded managers who haven’t read a book since the 80s and then it was a picture book….pissing even more on workers will not improve productivity.
You know D that there isn’t a Department of Labour anymore.
Your ramblings I’ve noticed a nuanced tripe.
Unproductive at the least.
So let’s give businesses more red tape, is that what you’re saying?
Well said Kat, the irony is that this is just but ONE extra day, ONE day, not 365 days.
Do we really think working 365 days a year with no holidays, no annual leave, will make for better business turnover, when no one has time nor energy to spend their hard earnt? Imagine our hospo industry where no one dines out, our tourism industry where no one spends money? Well done.
oh that’s coming don’t you fear, when inflation destroys money people don’t buy chocolate croissants
Remember when days off were called “weekends”? No such things exist anymore with Saturday, Sunday trading. National make people work two and three jobs across 7 days as well as shifts. But there are certain people who’s eyes are closed to this and only see life in black and white. They are called right wing voters.
And since Labour came to power this has all changed?
Yes they have and Luxon wants the end to “Labour Day” wee Bob, shame on him and shame on you.
To see things in black and white is to be accurate.
Wee Bob, you prove my point, thank you.
That’s fine Bert us Tories need to hang tough.
Your welcome and yes you seriously need too.
This is my opinion also. They actually regenerate flagging sales when appropriately marketed. I thought Luxon’s knowledge gap was in the area of servant leadership and the tenets of good governance. Obviously he knows nothing about ‘running a business’ either. Sad. What an empty wee suit he is…
Luxons knowledge gap is between his ears.
Gosh Kat your understanding of economics is showing through.
Clearly Luxon is clueless as Kat was quoting Luxons own figures.
Kat. The 300 to 500 million is the cost to businesses not the benefits. FFS. I see inflation hit nearly 7% today. This public holiday has been planned and should happen but don’t think it will make our lives better. It’s just another unproductive day that will add to that 7%. Likely to be 10% inflation by election time.
Those figures are not mine, Luxon used a MBIE calculation to arrive at $448m as a approximate cost for an additional public holiday. The same official sources also gave a figure of between $310.4m to $496.1m for the benefits of an existing public holiday.
Fair point. They seem to cancel each other out as a whole, although the businesses that close and give their workers a break are the losers, having to to pay their employees for no production while the hospitality sector has a blinder. Not much incentive to stay shut even though many are obliged to.
I haven’t got a link but you may want to check out various research locally and internationally that shows that far from being a brake on performance, that holidays actually increase productivity. Humans are simply more productive when rested. One research done by Alertness Solutions found that the having a break effect of a holiday can increase performance by 80%.
if I want to buy a new cooker, will I not buy it because it’s a public holiday? or defer the purchase till tomorrow?
the idea of public holiday losses is utter bullshit…maybe some businesses lose passing foot trade but they win if they pay holiday rates to their staff.
reject holiday cafe surcharges it’s theft the employer should pay the wages the customer has paid his share in the list price….surcharges are the result of employers not being able to budget for 365 days and to be fair a goughing exercise.
so 1 day will add 3percent to general inflation in your estimation nv? or is it of no consequence and your 10percent figure is just what you happen to ‘think?’
Maybe Chris Luxon should offer Aotearoa a new National Flag for the country and let Aotearoa keep Labour Day and Matariki?
I bet Chris Luxon’s mentor John Key has a few spare flags that would help bring down the cost of a new National Flag referendum?
Would Chris and David and Sour Kraut agree to a new flag if a requirement was to replace the Union Flag with The Tino Rangatiratanga one?
https://mch.govt.nz/nz-identity-heritage/flags/national-m%C4%81ori-flag
Who believes that National is really on the side of small businesses ? Not me.
Who believes that Luxon supports the workers ? Not me.
Who believes that you can’t have one without the other ? Me.
Who thinks that Luxon’s being a simplistic sociopathic jerk ? Me.
and… you’re not wrong applewood.
A country as unproductive as NZ can’t afford another day off. Yet I like the idea of an indigenous holiday like Matariki. So cancel an existing holiday and what better than Queen’s Birthday? Long past time the sponging Royals we’re told to fuck off. So two birds with one stone.
So you are opposed to people having days off?
I suppose you think we cannot afford sick leave, or high wages, yet business owners cruise round in their Ford Rangers live it up, while their workers slogg their guts out with no end in sight
After the last 2 years there are not many bosses in flash cars as many have sold them mortgaged their house worked long hours to stay afloat but that would not fit in with your hatred of those that try to move up in the world by working hard or investing in houses that give homes to many ..It is typical of this out of touch government to think businesses can afford the cost of another unproductive day . Under normal circumstances a extra holiday will balance itself out but not now and not for the next 3 to 4 years.
So you think that workers shouldn’t have any holidays, sick leave and protections and they should have their wages frozen for all their careers because poor business owner.
People like you would screw the worker and have their living standards lowered to the level of India and China. Why should worker have to struggle and lose everything.
But you are on record as wanting people out on the street if they get sick or laid off. Typical. No common decency
How many jobs have you created. All my staff were paid well over the pay rate so I am happy with my view of how employers should act
But you dont want them to have paid sick leave or holidays, or freeze wages if need be so you can buy a Ford Ranger.
No I see lots of flash black Mercs and Audi’s in Wellington seem to be driven by some very chirpy people. Must from off the public tit lol. Not sure plenty of dough around here apparently lol.
hey trev cry me a river………………
Days off? Remember…they are called weekends.
Weekends off for some work for very many others. Unfortunately this is at the core of National’s myopic thinking, they have absolutely no policies other than the garbage that comes out of Christopher Luxon’s mouth on a daily basis. Sorry to say this man is thick, he wants to get rid of a long weekend that puts money in the pockets of many small and large businesses including his airline, when people jet off to make the most of their well earned time off . His thinking is back to the future, i dread to think about him and David Seymour in power, the working man and woman be very afraid and be very careful what you wish for.
which party is responsible for creating a low wage economy scuppering any effort to invest in the productive side of the economy national their only interested in the ponzi fire quick buck economy one comment from luxion that said everything was iam noy intrested in cutting the national herd in half that means forget cleaning up the rivers forget climate change forget value added what we will get is a return to ponzi economics head in the sand arse up to every problem and cut bugets everywhere
cutting spending in some areas is actually wasteful as problems expand and have costs, you’d think capitalists would get that, y’know the cost/benefit thing.
…so it’s not a question of ‘good management’ but being mean petty and vindictive to people they don’t approve of.
national seem to prefer prisons to social housing as a solution
National dont give a shit about workers, unless they are self-employed ‘tradies’ or people that own their own businesses. To them, being a waged or salaried worker means that you havent tried hard enough in your life and dont deserve anything.
they don’t even care about small business and that’s the tragedy of people who vote nat, they will be betrayed by them just as labour betrays working people…both parties are in the thrall of corporate interests not the ‘little people’ workers or small business..
Lol. Te Reo Luxon will still still be your next PM. Our Glorious Leader made idiotic statements early in her reign. The turd will become more polished as time goes on. The Maori holiday was political brilliance – the right just need to suck it up and move onto vote winners such as co-governance, law and order and cost of living.
Te Reo’s handlers have had a shocker over the past week. That said no one cares about beltway moans like this when cost of living keeps skyrocketing and gangs of youths controlled by crime syndicates are roaming the streets with no fear of police.
Yep. Storm in a teacup. Once people have to give their houses back to the bank and pay 4 bucks for petrol and 20 bucks for cheese…the public holiday thing will be forgotten and Labour will be tarred and feathered. Smug Robertson will be first to feel it. Fact is, New Zealand simply doesn’t work as hard and smart as other comparable countries. Also, most of you don’t want to understand this, we have a tiny tax payer base and we don’t generate possible huge income with natural resources like coal or oil or minerals. We have no money to afford more unproductive fancies.
new zealands private debt is a basket case and has been long before labour took office its a total mess investor/speculators there actually mainly boomers that hold the most debt there going try and cash up all at once the ponzi collapses compound gains turn to compound losses it happened in ireland it still hasnt recovered bank nationalization is possible as deposit holders carry the can
Yes Uncle Fester respects few people or entities but one he does is Te Reo Maori cause its been drilled into him by the Corporates culture. It’s Ingrained in him.
He’s no John Key, now is he? Not even close.
The common touch? Get the fuck out of here! Fetch my Mercedes, boy, and quick!
Luxon is coming across like a bitter old ZB caller, that is when he’s not relaxing being chained up in his dungeon basement getting whipped.
Hot on the heels of abandoning public transport subsidies equalling abandoning public transport, hating on a different take on health, the miserable prick now wants a public holiday ditched too.
At least we know he is a seething bitter rich man who just hates the proles getting any form of pleasure. What happened to this guy in his formative years? Cruelty reigned is a good guess.
How much more misery can he unleash if he gets the chance? Plenty! Bah, humbug!
Honestly, he’s making useless Labour look positively adorable. And that takes some doing!
No he’s is coming across as a woke corporate CEO which he was. Still people will look to him as the economic shit hits the fan.
He needs to zip it at times.
He is coming across more frequently like a Grinch for no good reason other than this be sadistic. He doesn’t engage his brain before talking. And people will turn off.
And although we expect National to be the old public school disciplinary miserable Prefect at times, Luxon is amplifying that belief in a bad way. I’m picking some of his MP’s are thinking “shut the fuck up Christopher”!
Like I say, he’s making Labour look reasoned!
Luxon has fallen into that age old National trap of barking at every passing car. People will tire very quickly of that from a novice politician. They tired of Bridges and he’d been around a while.
Bert. Yes. “ Barking at every passing car syndrome”. It’s odd behaviour when he should be able to just romp home (in a black Mercedes) over te Puapua , and the secrecy surrounding it, and the constitutional implications. He has to know all this unless he is really thick, but with mentors like John Key and that ferret fellow anything is possible. Nothing really adds up when half the time he has to gobble back his words again.
why? he has no answers or policies that haven’t failed before
Gosh I think I’m going to cry.
You should we Bob, National and Luxon are pathetic, I’d shed a tear too.
reluctantly seconded xray
OK Martyn, you’ve half changed my mind..
The noteworthy Ancient Civilizations were all known to have their feast-days. Their feast days tended to expand too lol 🙂
The Hebrew’s were originally a poor people regarding feast-days.. though modern Jews are rich with such days today. And so the feast-day expansion principle extends to modern times.
Matariki could be nice, if the PM and the Media don’t wokeify it – because then it would just be a detestable virtue signal. Matariki is kool, 50 headlines about how the PM spent hers is vomit worthy.
For a divisive figure like PM Ardern, implementing a unity-holiday is questionable. In any event – have the public holiday, but I do feel sorry for employers.
I’m not convinced it’s right to force employers to pay for labor not received.
I was born and raised in a community with an 80% Maori population, I had never heard of Matariki until recently. Not one mention in 40 years.
It sounds like a BS made up day that stems from wokery academic circles.
The thing to remember here is how he’s floated THIS holiday – Labour Day – as one to remove.
Trying to remove the day is also trying to remove our collective memory of what the day stands for – a recognition of workers’ struggle for decent conditions & work/life balance.
If the day commemorating that is gone, then where does that take working conditions from there?
“He who controls the past, controls the future” indeed!
indeed it’s not so much the holiday but the NAME of the holiday
….surely ditching queens birthday or ANZAC day would have the same ‘productivity benefits’ c’mon fester I darezya.
Yes…..as shallow as a puddle. His naivety will be fully exposed under the glare of the election spotlight.
Nothing exists in a vacuum and he’s about as vacuous as they come… along side his mentor, Key.
“His naivety will be fully exposed under the glare of the election spotlight.”
Unfortunately it’ll be a dim illumination. Meaningful discourse is notably absent during our election campaigns. Parties are even happy not to publish manifestos. The gold standard is now 10 second soundbites and trite slogans breathlessly delivered in advertisement saturated gotcha TV interviews.
” Luxon’s Labour Day/Matariki Blunder reveals a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing ”
And, I’d posit, also revealed a narcissistic psychopath. And good on him. I sometimes wish I was a man who cared less and was worth more. I do sometimes wish I was a man who could see profitable opportunities in the terminally unlucky and unlovely and indeed, could harvest them as a resource like the cops, loan sharks, insurers and banksters do.
The people who like luxon are like luxon, and there are more of them around than one might think.
I was in Wanaka yesterday and oh my my God! The new mansions, the Rangies, Bentley’s and all manner of cock extending 4×4 bravely scaling the speed bumps at the supermarkets on the way to the Chardonnay Dahlings and if they must run down the odious hoi polloi on the way, then all the better.
AO/NZ is becoming another state of the U$A, just like Australia. The U$A. A vast mental asylum housing egomaniacal and narcissistic psychopaths, but wait? There’s more! They’re spreading around the globe.
It’s a mistake to call it a blunder by Luxon. I suspect he knows exactly what he’s doing – appealing to a strong anti Maori sentiment in the electorate. Act will do the heavy lifting but National will do just enough to let everyone know that they agree.
His comment is revealing on so many levels:
1. The idea that anyone, let alone Chris Luxon can come up with an accurate cost benefit analysis of having or not having a particular public holiday is laughable. It would be an incredibly complex calculation that is almost certainly unknowable.
2. If having a day off is bad for business (and thus the country) why not get rid of weekends? Everyone can work 7 days a week. Additionally, the working day should be 12 and not 8 hours long. Obviously the problem is more nuanced than just extrapolating a number or two. Chris either knows that and is being disingenuous (and not fit to run the country) or is an idiot and not fit to run the economy.
3. Given all the challenges our country is currently facing, e.g. homelessness, mental health, massive inflation, inequality, rising crime, brain drain, poor wages, poor education, failing health care, reducing standards of living… Given all this Chris believes that what we really need is one less public holiday! And that doing so would fix all those other problems?
4. By any measure taking people’s holidays away is not a way to make friends and influence people. You’d think that in a true democracy it wouldn’t be much of a vote winner – unless of course we don’t really live in a true democracy and Chris is actually talking to the 20 or so people that really choose who runs our country: The people who will fund his political campaign, spy on his opponents (and leak their dirty secrets), choose the message presented by the media, control when the economy is down and when it is up. The same people that prevent our current prime minister from fixing all of the above problems (even if we believe she wanted to).
John
It’s not a complex calculation at all. Refer to the first post here by Kat, she made the calculation for you.
when like fester you have no actual policies all there is is slinging red meat at the nutters amongst you base…don’t worry ’24 hour walkback’ will walk back on this one
Just so we’re clear. Since it’s fine to call Luxon, Uncle Fester, then Jacinda being called Cindy or Taxinda is far game now?
NB Ive always used the terms Jacinda and/or Prime Minister (the above example withstanding)
you’ll do it anyway so why ask?
So will Matariki be on addition to the unofficial Maori Day Off?
If anything. The MDO should be officially recognised and be granted as and when it’s taken!
Holidays?
We get two every week!
You might, but then you only think about yourself.
I think we should go back to 6 o’clock closing and no Saturday shopping.
you might andrew but many don’t
Remove Labour day as a holiday. It was the obvious choice as he would never touch the religious observances or ANZAC day that would be a step to far. Queen’s birthday now that would have really put the spotlight on him making a stand for a more independent country and started a debate on our royal connection but he didn’t.
Labour day is fair game and shows very clearly where the Nasty Natz priorities are as they have done more to destroy the reason the day was created in the first place to celebrate workers rights and the struggle against the naked greed and evils of capitalism. So yeah an easy target for them.
At least he has dispelled any notion that he is a compassionate conservative and he and his caucus will do what they always do to working people. Shaft them.
What political party started Labour Day?
Oh dear wee Bob.
A chapess on the NatRad discussion hour suggested eliminating provincial holidays instead. Much better. Someone then came on and said we work 15 more days a year than the OECD average.
Why is NZ always in such a squeeze? 40 years after ‘working class hero’ Mike Moore’s lambburger suggestion?
Luxon is a BAC. No matter the genuineness of the conversion to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, from my too long experience, it always devolves to a justification for the privileged. And in these times a support for the anti-democratic Right. Not here in NZ thanks to Ballance and Savage. But that dark shade hangs over National. Of course voters are about their mortgages, here and in America, so they don’t look up to the ‘gathering clouds’. There will be no 2nd chance after our third world war.
I don’t think Luxon’s statement deserves your big rounding on him, Martyn. He seems as watery useless as John Key ( was just about to put John whatsisname), one way or the other. Though the yertles suffer and suffer silently, as the real foundation of our state post Savage’s welfare state.
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