#Tag
Another one from the 'oooh, that didn't age well' files;
"This year we are fortunate that New Zealand First will be the strongest has ever been and that will present a chance to change the system away from pure neo-liberal ideals which have let us down and collapsed most of provincial New Zealand."
Comment by "Jon R", 2017
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/02/26/hey-shamubeel-why-are-you-rewriting-our-history/
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About a week ago, #GordonCampbell threw cold water on the prospect of regime change in 2026;
"National can win with Luxon regardless. This country hasn’t had a genuine one term government since the Labour government of 1957-1960. (If Norman Kirk hadn’t died, his government would probably have been re-elected in 1975.)"
I'm not so sure. In 2019 there was equally good reason to think a one-party majority would never happen under MMP.
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"To recap: tens of thousands of people working in construction and in the public service have lost their jobs. The retail economy has tanked - in Wellington in particular. GDP has shrunk. Although the services sector constitutes about 60% of the New Zealand economy, it has been in ongoing contraction for 19 months in a row. Consumer spending has dried up etc etc."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
Looks like NatACT First are backing down on some of their beneficiary bashing. From a September update I just found in my email;
"We’re making changes to the traffic light system from 20 October 2025. We’re introducing Report Job Search and Upskilling activities for some clients at red. This is instead of having your benefit reduced."
Also I thought they were canning the winter energy payment, but seems not;
"Winter Energy Payment will re-start on 1 May 2026."
How can we present a fair picture of what's changed, for better and for worse, since the 2023 election? Or, is that the wrong question? Maybe people can see for themselves that a lot of things are getting worse, but they'll take some convincing that a change of government would make any difference.
If so, it's on the opposition parties to present a vision for the long term, and a plan for starting to turn things around in the short term.
#NeoclassicalEconomics has become a cult. It's demonstrably false dogmas treated as gospel truth;
* corporatising and selling off public infrastructure cuts costs and improves services. False.
* cutting public spending boosts economic growth. False.
* Suppressing wages and benefits boosts employment. False.
* Deregulating markets increases competition, reducing prices. False.
How on earth do we get through to people who still believe this horseshit, despite decades of counter-evidence?
It's notable that the Minister of Finance in the current NZ government has a background in English literature and corporate lobbying. I guess they couldn't find anyone with an economics or finance background that would deliver the cargo cult budget approach they've been able to get Nicola Willis to front.
Any political cartoonists out there looking for a free idea?
Premise: Kids playing musical chairs, watched by NZ PM CLuxon. Who points at the crestfallen kids who just lost a round, and tells them if they stop playing PlayStation and look harder for an empty chair, they're bound to find one.
Forget all the silly candidates in this year's local body elections, at last there are some serious contenders;
One of the biggest problems with local government in Aotearoa is that central government have devolved a whole lot of responsibilities to them, without passing on sufficient funding to fulfill them. So they either need to hike rates, increase council debt, or both. Or cut services.
A lot of this is effectively creative accounting by govts. Moving public spending and debt onto someone else's balance sheet, so their own books look healthier come election time.
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I'm mystified by Takuta Ferris doubling down on his attacks on non-Māori Labour members supporting their party's candidate. What could he possibly think he's going to achieve with this?
Ferris has numerous things to apologise for. Let's go through a few of them.
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"If National want to go into the next election with some breathing room, families need to stop feeling the squeeze. That means growth, jobs, and rates relief."
#JamesRoss, #TaxpayersOnion, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/572447/coalition-loses-power-in-new-political-poll
The patient is bleeding out! The only thing that's going to save them is more bloodletting 🤦♂️
"I wonder how long it will be before they [the government of the day] go apeshit and use it to open another front in their racist hate campaign against Māori? And will ACT, who back in 2003 claimed to be the "party of property rights" and opposed retrospective expropriation, support or oppose a racist law change?"
@norightturnnz, 2025
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2025/08/foreshore-and-seabed-30.html
Exactly what I've been wondering, get out my head! : P
It seems that "productivity" is the new "efficiency" for the corporatists and their reputation laundering machine;
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/01/31/how-to-help-nzs-productivity-problem/
Having shut down the Productivity Commission and ignored its findings ...
... and handed the power to determine what productivity means and how to boost it back to Treasury ...
... the NatACTs and their Winston First hangers-on are using it to mean whatever suits their agenda.
I missed the submission deadlines for the Poor Debanked PlanetWreckers Bill and the Anti-Wellbeing Bill. But even once they close, it's not too late to email all the party leaders using their Parliamentary email address. Which also puts your views on the public record, and keeps our total opposition to this casual coup live in their minds.
Links to those bills here, along with the text of my submission on the Deregulatory Standards Bill;
Listening to Guyon Espiner's interview with CLuxon. He starts off sounding a tad more human than he did with Jack Tame, but the chatbot-speak kicks in about 5 minutes in;
"But what we are doing, is we have refreshed all of our Defence leadership, from heads of the Forces, through the Chief, through the Defence Secretary, through to the Minister, obviously. And I've asked them for a new strategy on our defence strategy."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/30-with-guyon-espiner?share=514c090c-041b-48b6-8c90-bf6986a67eb2
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Listening to CLuxon's interviews with Tame and Espiner, it's become clear to me that our PM is a plausible sentence generator in a man suit.
Like ChatGPT, he generates sentences based on the data he's been trained on - in this case talking points - and the prompt he's given. But he has no idea what any of it really means. He just blurts out some variant of the talking point he associates with the keywords in the question.
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Before the first Labour government came in and started to create a universal social welfare system in Aotearoa, the two major parties of the time - United and Reform - formed a grand coalition to hold them off. It lasted 4 years, from 1931-35. The National party emerged from the wreckage
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"National has usually not faced such constraints, and this term has had coalition partners who are explicitly anti-democratic and anti-constitutional. The lesson for voters is not to let that happen again, and to punish those parties until they credibly commit to respecting a democratic, consultative style of government."
@norightturnnz, 2025
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-problem-is-regime-not-mmp.html
Well put.
Jack Tame asks Nicky No Boats why her government are on track to borrow about as much in 5 years as Labour did in 6. Including the pandemic response years. Instead of answering the question - or even acknowledging the fact - she continues to burble her talking points about the "reckless" borrowing and spending of the previous government;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjwdFeAcGoA
I'm so tired of having NatACT First piss on me and tell me it's raining.
Hipkins is still humming the same tune he was singing a year ago, the 'no new ideas about tax policy' march;
Why the f%$k not Chippy? Both TPM and the Greens had wealth tax cards on the table in the last election, and grew their vote from 2020. Labour didn't, and haemorrhaged support.
Taxing wealth accumulation is financially sensible, ethically justified, and popular. Find a f%&king spine Labour, commit to a policy!
NatACTs love to blame our low wage economy on regulation, or low population, or "welfare dependency" or whatever. But the real reason is policies they pass into law, which help rentiers keep more of the wealth workers create (including precarious entrepreneurial workers).
"... the amendments that were made to the Equal Pay Act in 2020 made a real, tangible difference to women and women's pay. We had 13 successful pay equity claims that went through, and those women saw a huge difference. In some cases, up to 30%+ changes to their pay.
Today we've seen a huge step backwards, and we need to create a better world for our daughters and our granddaughters."
#JanTinetti, 2025
#podcasts #BHN #BigHairyNews#NZPolitics#EqualPay#PublicFinances
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