By Chris Trotter*
If Jacinda Ardern wasn’t congratulating Victorian Labor’s Dan Andrews on Saturday evening, then she bloody well should’ve been. With a third successive Labor victory under his belt, Andrews is set to become the state’s longest-serving Labor premier. In addition to offering her own, and her party’s, hearty congratulations, the New Zealand prime minister must have been sorely tempted to add: “How the hell did you do it!”
It’s a question the whole of the Australian Right will be asking themselves. They were so confident of winning Victoria that they simply failed to notice how profoundly the politics of the Lucky Country have changed. It simply did not occur to them that a clear majority of the population saw Andrews as something other than the cruel and capricious Covid tyrant who had locked Victorians down for weeks – and months – on end. They could not conceive a Labor premier, whose actions had unleashed street battles between trade unionists and state police, possibly retaining the loyalty of Labor voters.
As far as the Australian Right was concerned, Andrews and the Victorian Labor Party were dog-tucker. Their man, the Liberal Party leader, Matthew Guy, couldn’t lose. Victoria was about to be prized out of Labor’s cold dead hands. (The party has governed the state for all but four of the last 27 years).
Those who ventured onto Twitter to impart the heretical information that there were signs Labor might win, were greeted with scorn, and tweeted with contempt. “Just you wait ‘til Saturday,” crowed the over-confident Right, “then you’ll see!”
Well, quite. And what they saw was a slight slippage in Labor’s support – understandable after 8 years in office – and a reasonably strong performance by the Liberal’s coalition partner, the National Party. But, there was nothing like the Liberal surge needed to topple Andrews’ government. Quite the contrary, in fact. In the innermost of Melbourne’s inner suburbs it was the Greens who racked up gains – taking at least 2 seats from Labor. At the same time, moderate millionaire Simon Holmes-A’Court, author of the “Teal Revolution” which unseated a clutch of Liberal party grandees in the federal election, was claiming victory in two out of the four seats contested by his Climate 200 movement.
What the Liberal Party, and the Australian Right in general, have yet to register and accept is that Australia’s centre of political gravity has shifted sharply to the left. Crucial to this crippling perceptual failure is the performance of the Australian media, the Murdoch press in particular, where right-wing sentiment has become so deeply entrenched that its editors, journalists and columnists no longer even try to understand the other side of the political divide.
Those not dismissed by right-wing “shock jocks” as “woke”, are branded “cultural Marxists”, or “critical race theorists”. It has become almost impossible to persuade the Right that the number of people who actually merit these ideological labels is nowhere near large enough to swing an election. Even more dangerously, the assumption remains (no matter how meagre the evidence) that the overwhelming majority of “ordinary people” share the Right’s rampant prejudices. It is only after the votes have been counted that their misperceptions stand exposed.
On both sides of the Tasman this sort of “bubble thinking” is apt to steer the principal parties of the Right in the wrong direction. No matter how unanimous social-media appears at times, its ideological homogeneity is much more the product of IT engineers’ algorithms than it is of some broad cultural consensus. Such consensus as still exists in the Anglosphere, is far more likely to be found clustering around the shibboleths of the Left than the Right.
Gender Equality, Climate Change, Indigenous Rights, Cultural Diversity: hard though it may be for many on the Right to accept, these causes attract vastly more followers than Racism, Sexism, Homophobia and Climate Change Denialism. Not that Murdoch’s columnists, nor Australian Sky TV’s pundits, will ever concede an inch to such ideological heresies.
Andrews’ Victorian victory is of a piece with the general failure of the American Right to achieve the gains it was expecting in the recent mid-term elections. Generally speaking, voters not already addicted to the Right’s ideological Kool-Aid find very little to like about candidates who manifest the odd and at times frightening behaviour of ideological zealots and outlandish conspiracy theorists. As Holmes-A’Court’s teal candidates have proved in two elections on the trot, moderation + warmth is a winning combination – even in traditionally conservative electorates.
What, then, can New Zealand’s Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern, learn from the experience of her Victorian counterpart?
Almost certainly, the most important lesson to be drawn from Saturday’s Victorian result is that it is very wrong to give too much credence to the Right’s predictions of inevitable – and crushing – victory. The political-economy of the mainstream news media makes it considerably easier to shape right-wing than left-wing political narratives. In spite of numerous studies confirming that a majority of journalists lean to the left, it is rare to encounter mainstream journalists willing to cast the conduct of their employer’s principal advertisers in a consistently unfavourable light.
Equally unwise, is the ingrained habit of far too many political journalists to speak with unwarranted confidence about the attitudes of “ordinary” people. All too frequently, such commentary is based on nothing more than the crudest stereotypes. Among the Professional and Managerial Class, in particular, there is a pernicious view of “ordinary” people as repositories of all manner of “deplorable” prejudices and predilections – as if they weren’t discussing human-beings at all, but orcs.
Jacinda Ardern should draw reassurance from both the American and Australian elections that holding fast to a moderate progressivism is very far from being a losing strategy. Refusing to engage in the mud-wrestling so beloved of populist politicians is also unlikely to cost her votes. Nor being willing to engage in a little public humility. People who make mistakes every day of their lives are surprisingly willing to forgive those politicians who admit to being human, all-too-human.
Perhaps the most important lesson our Prime Minister could learn from the Victorian Premier, however, is the one he delivered to his fellow Victorians on election night. Quoting the former Labor prime-minister of Australia, Paul Keating, Andrews told his cheering followers: “Leadership isn’t about doing what’s popular, it’s about doing what’s right.” Alluding to the trials of the Covid-19 Pandemic, he praised his fellow Victorians for maintaining their “faith in science, and their faith in each other”.
It was that sense of kindness, he said, that sense of all being in this together, that carried Victoria through a one-in-one-hundred-year crisis. “Friends,” he reassured his fellow Victorians, “hope always defeats hate.”
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
118 Comments
Good article. This is why I think National are struggling and will struggle more than they should in the upcoming election. They offer no hope. It's just all negative complaining with no solutions.
They should be romping home given the economic prospects for the next year.
There's a year until the next election. Are you expecting a full policy suite from them already?
Labour spent years bitching about National doing nothing, promised everything under the sun, recycled rejected election policies and changed leaders a few months out from polling day in 2017. Then they got into power and managed to do even less than National did while all those super important things got worse and worse under their watch.
The point is, JA was still rewriting and relaunching policies (e.g. Light Rail) weeks before the election. Expecting National to have a full policy platform the year before an election year is insane.
Thats what I don't understand about this country. Many years ago while in the UK the opposition had shadow Ministers, such that when the real Minister came out with a policy the shadow Minister did too, from law, housing even a shadow budget. The people could then get a feel for how competent the opposition really are. Why does this not happen here? Closest thing I've seen lately is TOP policy on UBI and tax brackets etc, they are a small party not even in parliament...they make National and Act etc look sleepy, lazy and incompetent.
Many people (~ over 90% at the last justice referendum) will have no problem with National+Act entrenching 3 Strikes next time they can. We might even move back to public executions some day.
Labour+Greens undemocratic action (no surprises there) will open a festering can of worms.
Precisely Rex Pat. Did I see that Ardern is trying to slip in an amendment to the 3 Waters legislation before Parliament that it can never be rescinded by a simple majority in the future. That just isn't democratic! Introduce something when you have a majority but also put fishhooks in it that make it impossible to remove or amend by the same simple majority forever after.
Anyway, Trotter's articles are never objective nor politically balanced. More a case of wishful thinking on his part. Labour has no hope of securing another term in office and even they know it. When the PM and most of her Ministers start upping their taxpayer-paid overseas trips then the writing is definitely on the wall; it's a Labour thing.
But you know what, around 80% of NZers do not want a bar of privatisation of water.
60% is not a super majority, 75 % is.
And 60% would be more easily achieved than unwinding the bit about sales of houses to foreigners in the South Korean fta that Key stitched us up with back in 2014. That move was as good as any entrenchment with a measly 60% vote required. There was quite probably 80% opposition to house sales to foreigners back then.
I think JK is the worst, maybe after Muldoon...and now Luxon is creaming extra money through his position, give me a caring compassionate smart leader any day...rather than one playing golf in Hawaii, and ready to vote for Bolsonaro and Trump... I was losing faith in JA until I read RexPats bit, now I know shes the only hope for us
Elections are almost always won in the middle, and Luxon has done a very good job of moving National back to the middle after Bridges and Collins stupidly went further right than Key or English were. National would be very sensible to brand themselves as being Labour but without the handouts and with delivery. I will probably vote Labour, but National are a lot more tempting to me than they were 2 years ago, particularly without the PI tax cuts (although they haven't specifically ruled those out).
He has a long way to go to get back to the middle. But he should keep going. There's still this weird desire to try and appeal to NZ First voters who are literally always going to vote for NZ First. In doing so, they come up with policies that crap all over the middle that they need to get them over the line.
I remain unconvinced that National is really any better until they can articulate the case for indexing without attaching riders like 'no top rate' or 'bringing back interest deductions so FHBs end up underwriting finance costs for investors bidding against them'. Indexing should be the easiest thing in the world to get over the line and they run the risk of being outflanked by Robertson on it, who is now being decided coy about any changes to taxes in the lead-up to the next election, after years of cynically portraying indexing as a 'tax cut' as opposed to 'not an increase by stealth'.
They're willing to spend political capital on the things they believe in.
John key spent his political capital on flag referendums and selling the power companies, when he could have used it to fix the housing crisis.
I think that will be the case with the next national government. Just take us back to the settings of the previous National government so as not to frighten the horses.
Very Reactionary.
Very well put. Another example of perception is reality as I think most people judge political parties rightly or wrongly on their leaders and the messages they convey and the way in which they convey them. Positivity still goes a long way with the voting public. This is where National are missing a trick. People understand already that there’s lots of negatives in the world. They want their leaders to articulate hope and positivity. If they can deliver on that hope even better.
Labour hearts are with their snouts gorging on a once in an MMP lifetime opportunity to slosh cash to their supporters and to establish a socialist and ideologically driven centralization platform. They have shown cynical contempt to democratic processes by passing laws under "urgency". Further their undemocratic co-governance and Maori sovereignty agenda has pushed our country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
National statistics for crime, gangs, education, health, social welfare, housing, inflation and debt make for appalling reading. In health and education, they have dropped the ball on providing front line services in order to spend untold $billions on centralized bureaucracies. Three waters will be similar and so will the merging of our public media, if they are given the opportunity. There are no sensible business cases for these restructures. It is ideologically driven.
We are currently on a downward spiral to 3rd world status, where your identity, whakapapa and culture determine your place in society. And who voted to rename all of our public agencies in a language that very few understand?
Think carefully if this is the NZ you want.
Yea being underwater in 100 years time isn't going to matter very much if you can't feed your kids or afford to go to work in the here and now. The poor might be political collateral damage as far as climate absolutists are concerned, but at some point you're going to have to stump up the actual cost to ordinary New Zealanders, instead of ranting about sea level rises that are centuries away or about our Grandchildren's future.
I can't house my family in pathos.
GV and others - Climate change is here now and impacting people (including those of modest means), for example people who live in flood prone areas, or low lying areas near the coast, or who are affected other climate change related events. Many flood prone and low lying areas were developed for cheap housing. It’s isn’t just the well off who are concerned about climate change you know.
I'm aware of that. But I need to pay for things in dollars and IMO no one can really said to be sufficiently concerned without key information like 'How much will this actually cost?'
I get that it will effect plenty of vulnerable people, but if part of the response involves things like that are going to make life drastically more expensive (e.g. hiking fuel taxes) then people need to front up with that information and the amounts in question. Every time I ask for the actual costs I get some hand-waving response like "We can't afford to do nothing" or "we only have one planet", which while arguably true, doesn't exactly fill in any of the blanks.
Yes. Please snark more at me for daring to suggest we not treat the poor as collateral damage for policy vaguery. That's definitely me making it all about myself, right?
But nice effort at actually responding to my point. I'm sure this is the kind of thing the admins are hinting at when they say they're getting tired of the pettiness and insulting comments that contribute little. I look forward to you taking the same holier-than-though approach with them too.
Dare I say that the reason they are poor is probably because they only ever think about the here and now? If our government does the same they will get the same outcome, and it might only be 10 years away that we would feel the economic affects of ignoring climate change, why would anyone with money want to invest or live in a backwards country.
Yes, just take foreign investment. We already know international firms take how a country and it's companies are addressing climate change in their decisions to invest. This will increasingly become entrenched in their own jurisdictions legislation. We will miss out on investment and people will not buy our stuff if we're a high emitting (per capita) country. The transition will be expensive but not transitioning will be more expensive
In the same way NZ influenced women getting the right to vote. By setting an example that other countries can aspire to and show it is possible.
Of course many of the people who oppose NZ taking a lead on climate change would have also dismissed women's right to vote as woke nonsense.
How many women will be driven into poverty by the destruction of our ag sector?
How many countries are similar enough to us for this climate work to matter to them? In your example, almost all countries have a population of around 50% women.
And no, it isnt woke nonsense. You would do well to avoid labelling people you do not know.
How many women will be driven into poverty by the destruction of our ag sector?
2 things:
- Addressing climate change does not require the destruction of our agricultural sector.
- even if it did, it would result in less women being driven into poverty than not addressing it. Like I said before, countries will not trade with us unless we do our bit.
Our largest trading partner, by some measure is China. They couldn't care less about climate change. They are also currently committing genocide. New Zealand certainly set a great example there that other countries can aspire to. Unfortunately for the Uyghurs, they are not as trendy as climate change.
And companies do not invest in one country or another because of its position on climate change. Large companies will put a black lives matter flag on their insta, or a rainbow flag in their next superbowl ad, or a Ukrainian flag or any other thing that signals there virture and boosts there sales.
And those same companies will keep buying minerals from countries using child slave labour and making them into products to sell to anyone who has the money to afford them.
Anyone believing that the ESG greenwashing nonsense is not just yet another example of companies virtue signalling their ways to profit, lives in a world with a historical perspective of about 45 minutes.
Unfortunately, the world seems beset with propaganda and group-think. I always assumed greenhouse gasses were causing climate change too, until I actually looked at the data for myself. Hasn’t this covid period shown you anything? Think for yourselves people. We’re on a pathway to deindustrialization and a severe lowering of living standards if the climate alarmists get their way.
How depressing regarding Dan Andrews. He, Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau deserve to be relegated to dustbin of history with a "we'll never do that again" caveat from the public.
If you want to know how utterly ridiculous the alarmism is around carbon dioxide (and methane) then here's a starting point.
Here's Dr Saifedean Ammous (Ph.D in sustainable development from Columbia) interviewing Professor William Happer (Emeritus physics Professor from Princeton University) regarding CO2. Happer’s impressive. You can tell that guy has a wide breadth of knowledge.
Here’s a nice paper which clearly shows the evidence that CO2 is not controlling the earth’s temperature.
Here's Tony Hellers youtube channel where he posts regular snippets of evidence and papers. Tony worked on the design of the X86 microprocessor that you're probably using to read this. He's dedicated himself to highlighting the fraud and hysteria surrounding the supposed carbon dioxide and methane induced global warming.
Here's a nice resource https://co2coalition.org/
Check your sources fat pat, you're making a fool of yourself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_Coalition#:~:text=The%20organizatio….
Your ad hominem attack / logical fallacy highlights a very serious problem in New Zealand. Personal attacks against anyone expressing different ideas is corrosive to a liberal society. I'm living in Germany where people are mostly free to express ideas without being personally attacked. I'm not sure where the nastiness comes from in NZ, whether it's British culture? or some judgmental remnant of our Scottish Presbyterian roots?
I have friends high up in the public sector in Wellington and I know they'd NEVER publically express opinions different from the orthodoxy around CO2, covid19, and race relations because they are afraid. Just think about the damage that causes! The modern phenomena of cancel culture has morphed into something very ugly in New Zealand, almost a form of fascism. I really hope we can overcome this.
Welcome to politics,flip flops after elections and secret agendas are nothing new;
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/pm-defensive-after-video-reveals-gst-flip…
Prime Minister John Key has come under fire in Parliament this afternoon after a Herald video revealed he had ruled out a GST rise during his election campaign in 2008.
Mr Key outlined the Government's 2010 agenda to Parliament yesterday and signalled it was likely to raise GST from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent in May's Budget.
But in a 2008 press conference, Mr Key said raising taxes would not happen under a National Government.
"National is not going to be raising GST. National wants to cut taxes, not raise taxes."
Mr Key made the comment when asked if he could rule out a GST rise as a new Government grappled with deficits.
In Parliament today, opposition leader Phil Goff, challenged Key over the GST flip-flop.
"On what basis does he claim a mandate for increasing GST when he explicitly promised the nation that he wouldn't do so?", he asked.
This is going to be Labours biggest challenge, they have done so much behind the back of the public, and pushed through so much legislation that many are against, they have shown they cannot be trusted. We all know what they say about trust, easily lost, harder to gain
Frame your opponents as "hate".
It would be genius if it wasn't so hackneyed and transparent.
Making dissent illegal isn't hope. Police brutality isn't hope.
I could not agree more. Interest.co.nz is being ruined by a number of people not only making nasty comments attacking other commentators but they also make a huge number of comments on the same article. Why? Do they not have a life outside of Interest.co.nz.
This site used to be professional and fun. It is far from that now
Interest.co.nz is being ruined by a number of people not only making nasty comments attacking other commentators but they also make a huge number of comments on the same article. Why? Do they not have a life outside of Interest.co.nz.
I'm confused, is petty sniping bad or not?
People should at least try to use correct spelling and grammar as this is a business focused website after all. The spelling and grammar debates are an attempt to improve the quality of the comments section.
There is an edit function and a spellchecker. Learn to use them.
Many use phones to comment that autocorrect. This can throw some unintentional edits into a comment.
While it can take a second I’m happy to look through spelling/grammar errors.
It’s also a major distraction from discussion by playing the man and not the ball. You should loosen up a little mate it’s just a bit of fun.
During most of Key’s National government this site was considerably critical to the point that it was thought to be a proxy for lefties. Admittedly I was part of that as I had little enthusiasm for the blue suit brigade and Joyce’s remorseless ambition to create “Corporate New Zealand.” Sadly though, this Labour lot, overall are worse, much worse and that is because they do not deliver what they mouth and especially because what they mouth was largely unrealistic and extravagant in the first place. I was right with them in the action of the border closure and first lockdown. That though is their only real accomplishment and as John Key himself explained at the time, as necessary as it was, that was the easy part. From thereon they have failed miserably and Prime Minister Ardern will go down in history as an identity mawkish, oozing in pathos but no other substance other than putting a plug in a pandemic, and in that regard, with the possible exception of Muldoon, I would suggest all prior Prime Ministers and governments would have acted likewise, perhaps even earlier. Whenever I am unfortunate to see her, or hear her, the wonderful harmony of The Platters resonate “The Great Pretender.”
I would call John Key the great pretender. Pretending to do something while in fact leaving everything as it was.
A least Labour are attempting change in the way they see fit.
Some people won't like it, as we are a pretty reactionary bunch, but they are not likely to vote Labour anyway.
So one identity is justified because another can be said to be worse. Fine example of counterproductive nothingness and incapacity to find an original metaphor whilst about it. On the basis of that, you would enjoy an apple because it is less rotten than another. Go ahead and enjoy it anyway. The mindlessness of political partisanship by some on this site, all sides of the house, is one of the most immature and worthless features.
I agree. I lament the fact that I criticised John Key back then. Key wasn’t perfect, but perhaps my criticisms of his government back then were misplaced. I think Key's government would've been orders of magnitude better than the Greens/Labour on multiple economic and social fronts if they'd have been the ones handling covid19 and the economy. I've had to do some sole-searching in terms of politics in the last few years.
Same thing will happen in NZ
I am one of the 500,000. that left the greedy blue team last election and I will not be going back at this stage.
They don't understand the imports of having people in there own homes.
The red team doing a great job of undoing the mess that started from the GFC.
It was dum of the red team to print money but most of the damage has been done by laundered money after the GFC at they hands of the blue team.
lets undo this mess and start again this will not happen in the hands of the blue team.
The red team doing a great job of undoing the mess that started from the GFC.
Not sure now anyone could make that claim seriously. Debt relative to non-GDP qualifying purposes has been as strong as ever and the govt has been right behind it. Bubble economics has been in full swing.
Totally different context with limited applicability to NZ. Here we have a Labour government acting as illiberally as a right wing fanatic crowbarring through all manner of unpopular and non-democratic changes, when they were voted in to sort housing, which we now know was a trojan horse. Labour in Victoria stayed Labour, Labour in NZ has metastised into something else.
Gender Equality, Climate Change, Indigenous Rights, Cultural Diversity: hard though it may be for many on the Right to accept, these causes attract vastly more followers than Racism, Sexism, Homophobia and Climate Change Denialism
Congratulations on turning a contest of ideas and principles with huge degrees of nuance into a blunt dichotomy, Chris.
People are increasingly leaning towards the economic left and distributism, but they are not leaning in favour of the left cultural issues.
The logical conclusion is the Right doesn't or won't fight on these cultural issues, but they also give you absolutely nothing economically. But the Left might give you something economically. What you are watching is the collapse of the centre-right in fear of the critiques of its opponents and unwillingness of its donors to bend at all concessions for ordinary people.
To get back to the subject of CT's article....! I must admit I was surprised by Dan Andrews' win in Victoria. So, a cautionary tale, ...what we keen readers read, may be quite true but is far from the minds of those whose interests lie elsewhere....putting food on the table, getting a job, paying the mortgage/rent.
In my view the biggest problem of the current government is that they have responded to undoubted major issues, even global ones, by encouraging more and more dependency of the ordinary citizen on state provision.
I believe this has been at cost to any sense of personal resilience. But telling the masses that they should rely more in their own resources is always going to be a hard sell in any election campaign.
I think the Victorian election result bears this out.
We are probably talking past each other Agnostium. I was not dismissing the role of the state, merely suggesting that this government has redistributed considerable tax dollars under a policy it terms as "being kind". Like all governments it has to consider achieving the right balance between helping those in need versus promoting an expectation of the state as first port of call. We so often have the "solo mum of 6", bewailing a lack of housing or food and with the expectation same will provided by the government, no questions asked.. I would be the last to suggest that our welfare system should not act as a safety net. No amount of self reliance trumps sudden sickness, redundancy or all manner of unanticipated personal disasters.
I was merely suggesting that a sound civil society is built on good level of self responsibility, independence of thought and expression, which at the very least our government should not discourage, perhaps even encourage. The majority of NZers, work hard, pay their taxes (with a little grumbling) to have the state provide the services you outlined. This Labour government has, I suggest, been sub par in providing said education, health, security etc., and seems preoccupied with handouts, maybe,...or maybe not, (depending on your political bias) focussed on signaling the virtues of Nanny State.
I live in Melbourne and the thrust of this article couldn’t be more wrong. Matthew Guy offers zero serious opposition.
Despite the feeling for Andrew’s as a person. He is a decent administrator, something Jacinda is objectively not. If NZ Labour are looking to the result in Victoria to heart they’ll be sorely disappointed.
A polling co rang me last night
Q Who did you vote for last election A didn't vote
Q Who is the Labour Candidate for Hamilton west A Dansey?
Q who is the Nat candidate for Ham West A ???????
Q Who will you vote for this election A don't know but it won't be the current govt
Q whats the major concern this election A Crime
Moderation + Warmth = .... ? .... certainly not Labour ...
...uselessness , controversy , extreme policies , undemocratic , lies & skullduggery = Ardern's Labour government ...
Boring , dumb , wishywashy , tax cuts for rich mates = Luxon & the Gnats ...
... pick your choice ...
“Jacinda Ardern should draw reassurance from both the American and Australian elections that holding fast to a moderate progressivism…”
Would that present Government policy could be termed “moderate” or “progressive” in any sense. These are Chris Trotter’s value judgments, they certainly aren’t mine. There is no reassurance to be had from promoting undemocratic, socially divisive policies against a backdrop of poor delivery on education, housing, economic strategy, crime and wealth inequality plus a confused climate and foreign policy.
CT's in good heart this week.
Dan the man is back to run the Victorians broke for another 4 years.
The posts re the right's lack of any meaningful messaging is the real issue for the centre right voters. Yes we will probably vote Labour out (for treason) but ideally, we still need something to vote for, don't we? Luxon's lack of anything other than repealing poor law being passed at the moment is not enough. Not even for now. I think Cindy will be feeling less worried about Luxon the longer he panders & ponders about this & that without telling everyone what National actually stands for.
Perhaps that's the real problem(?) they don't know what that is exactly. Sigh. I think this might have had a part to play in both Australian elections this year. The American mid-terms suffered from weak messaging from the right of centre politicians too, but it was also (still) about the anti-Trump.
It's complicated out there. It's not clear-cut like it used to be. I'm not sure it's about left v right anymore. It's more about trust and/or the lack of it. There's not much of the former & too much of the latter - across the board.
"Cindy" "treason" just like "worse PM in living memory"
It's this sort of rhetoric that turns people off voting for National or Act.
Most NZers don't like it when people use this type of language about the PM, they rightly assume it is used to mask the lack of substance to actually offer anything better. Comes across like a baby having a tantrum. Literally what Chris is writing about.
Agreed. Comes across as unhinged.
Co-governance is a storm in a teacup and something that a not lot of people are not worried about.
What is my water bill going to be, is what they will care about.
Directorships are something of a closed shop anyway, with directors often holding multiple directorships.
They are certainly not for those at the bottom of society like Maori predominantly are.
I think drawing comparisons with recent elections in the most Labour oriented state in Australia ie: they have now won 6 of the last 7 state elections, and with the Democats in the USA, where they actually didn't do nearly as well as expected, are eroneous for the reasons given. Given the all round poor performance of our goverment since closing the borders in 2020, I am optomistic that the next election in NZ will deliver a government a less polarising and more focused on those who produce the wealth for us all to enjoy.
What is the left? A leftist govt is all about improving the situation of the working class isn't it? Or is a left wing govt it a coalition of minority groups with liberal ideals that do nothing for low income and middle income people?
I personally think that that Biden has managed to maintain growth in the US economy but has faced the cost of living crisis and the housing downturn although that hadn't become too steep at the time of the midterms. So the economy was a game of two halves.
The major factor was the reversal of Roe vs Wade. That's unkindness that impacts on half the population of the US and brought women out in droves to vote for their own self interest. If National was to try any similar stupidity then they could forget being in govt.
Fake emoting on cue is not the same as being kind.
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