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Posts Tagged ‘John Key’

  1. Lefter 80 ~ Things fall apart …

    February 18, 2016 by emweb

    The centre cannot hold … this country (and, OK, many others to be sure) has developed into a fight for the centre over the last few decades in a race to who can be the most mediocre. Awesome, right? Fighting for the centre? I mean, once it was a battle to drag the country, then the rest of the world, into a future in which women were allowed to take an equal role in society, workers had rights as well as their exploiters, in which all people were cared for … we had the 40 hour week, the first real Welfare State, New Zealand mandated and ensured minority representation in parliament, at least for Māori… I do dare say it: all that made New Zealand a great nation was firmly on the left.

    And now the hardest fought battle is for the centre.

    And yes, John Key has won that battle. Repeatedly.

    But the world is changing and the centre is no longer holding. The battle for power in the United States may devolve to Trump on the far, crazy right and Sanders very distinctly on the left. In Britain, avowedly left-wing Corbyn took the top job in the Labour Party, much to the chagrin of the Labour Party’s ‘leadership’. What is the appeal? Both are not scared to say they’re left, for a start. Something both Labour Parties have found difficult for decades.

    Neither are centrist.

    That’s what you get after years of battling for the centre. Over here, Labour ‘likes’ Sanders but is worried by Corbyn, who has created a groundswell of voter support and who has already been responsible for a massive rise in grass roots Labour Party membership. NZ Labour’s attitude here reflects connections to Labour UK’s leadership more than anything else. We bought Tony Blair’s popularity contest off the back of our own terrible neo-liberal dalliance and we’ve been stuck there since, despite John Key doing it so much better.

    Of course, Labour here could actually grow some convictions and come from a similar stance to Sanders and Corbyn. Actually, you don’t even need to grow some – just resuscitate the ones the party was founded on.

    Remember those?

    Too scary? Then you really don’t deserve votes.

    Because National is currently staggering, Labour – what are you going to do? Never before has ennui so dogged this party of the moneyed and the glib. Key catastrophically mishandled Waitangi Day, then got booed at the League. That would have been unthinkable even a few months ago. Meanwhile, up north where the running-scared Key should have been, Stephen Joyce went from looking like an imperturbable manager to just another suited dickhead thanks to a very deftly-pitched toy penis.

    The ‘new flag’ looks awful – want proof? Even many National MPs think that. John Key’s personal vanity project to foist his corporate conservative logo onto the nation’s masthead is faltering badly, meaning they have to turn up the heat to bring even their own people in line. Once again, this would have been unthinkable a short time ago, when National’s caucus was as tight as Judith Collins’ pursed lips. Meanwhile people like me, who have long hated the Union Jack being part of ‘our’ flag long after England turned its back on New Zealand (a process which has accelerated recently, with punitive measures against Kiwis who want to work and live there) finds myself about to vote to keep the damn thing, both to spite John Key and because, frankly, the alternative sucks and the process to come to this design sucks more.

    Two million dollars was promised to ameliorate emergency housing months ago and … surprise! Not a cent has been spent. Meanwhile, 27 million has been squandered on the ‘new’ flag. How much of that has been spent? How many people made tidy profits from that process while other kids go hungry and while people have to live in cars, garages and on the street?

    State house evictions have accelerated. And concurrently, National has cut funding for mental health in Canterbury coz – who cares? Clearly not the National Government, which has failed to rebuild the city, failed the traumatised citizens of quake-ridden Christchurch and clearly couldn’t actually give a shit apart from keeping its insurance cronies sweet and crowing about a little building work – much of which has been mishandled.

    As for dairy, are we crying foul yet? We should be – how have all the eggs in that basket actually worked out for this short sighted ‘governance’?

    Gareth Hughes absolutely skewered Key in a speech in Parliament in an excoriating and painfully-accurate dissection of our Prime Minister’s current state of affairs … oh for someone like Lange in Labour who could do this so well! Now it’s the Greens we have to turn to for in-depth socio-cultural commentary.

    Meanwhile, National has its Trump in waiting, in the form of Judith Collins champing at the bit to muscle in and erect her police state. Her alternative is ‘bite the hand that feeds’ Bennett.

    Who has Labour got?

    This is your chance. Like never before.

    Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  2. Lefter 77 ~ we’re not ready for National’s collapse

    June 23, 2015 by emweb

    I’ve been thinking and saying for years that Labour needs a full renewal. Over here on the left, we’ve been grasping hopefully at whatever straws National hands us, praying that one after another failure, misstep and gaffe will be the long awaited key to a right collapse. Time after time it has led to nothing as National’s caucus unity and spin machine gloatingly triumphs.

    Now we’re in mid 2015, however, National has never seemed so jaded. Key has become so uncaring and arrogant, he can no longer be bothered learning even basic facts for his news appearances, and besides, most of his public appearances these days revolve around making excuses for mistakes by his MPs. Spin supremo the maleficent Steven Joyce completely wrong-footed the entire northland by-election campaign from beginning to end, giving National’s veteran enemy Winston Peters a grand campaign platform while even managing to make Peters come across as a working class hero, as unlikely as that is. (In this entire by -election, Labour was only notable, if at all, by its absence.) Nick Smith increasingly comes across, even to his own supporters, as a blithering twit, and even Bill English appears as if he doesn’t care and isn’t paying attention. Meanwhile the prospect that Judith Collins is seething in the wings salivating over what she considers her inevitable ascent must be shaking even the bluest of loyalists: she’s pure poison. Even her own colleagues and staff are afraid of and unsettled by her.

    But so what? There’s no viable alternative. When Labour had the chance to reinvent itself with the leadership process, offer a purpose, decide on its future and image, present a new voice and emerge as a credible, new-left voice for the twenty-teens, instead we ended up with old school Andrew Little, there only by dint of what’s left of the unions voting him in against the wishes of his caucus and members. This is Old Labour at its worst – the union stump is holding back the party, refusing to engage in the future, still jealous and possessive of its loss of decades-old working man’s power, still refusing to believe, against all evidence, that those days are long gone.

    I know many in Labour, including people I respect, fought hard to stop Labour collapsing in the last leadership process, and perhaps even to prevent Labour sintering into conservative and progressive factions.

    But that’s what I wanted. Because what would have emerged would have been something worth voting for.

    The old, scarred party staggers on, unable to let go, unable to capitalise beyond a few cheap shots here and there, its factions still treacherously leaking things to the press, back stabbing, arse covering, unhappy with the leader they didn’t vote for, unable to form a cohesive world view they can sell to the swing voters.

    Sad, sad, sad – because now National can fail as much as it wants and still win the next election.

    Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  3. Lefter 19 ~ Going to Prison

    September 23, 2009 by emweb

    In New Zealand, currently, there is some disquiet about our exceedingly high ranking of numbers imprisoned. We rank well above many other Western-style democracies. New Zealand seems to be throwing people into prisons at an unprecedented rate.

    The prison population was too high under Labour (a slightly left party that has been in power for three terms until ousted last year by the more right wing National Party). However, it’s now higher still, and National’s response has been to build prisons from shipping containers and to make more prisoners share rooms.

    This is so typical of the difference in right versus left philosophies, I just have to comment.

    The left (again, and understandably, generalising) tends to look at why people commit crimes, and tries to target resources accordingly. Not that this was super-effective under nine years of labour. But the left generally believes that people are good, although guidance can be called for.

    But the right, generally, thinks people are bad. The right therefore prefers to capture and punish offenders, rather than try and figure out why they are offending. You can tell somebody is right wing as soon as they start spouting off about locking people up, and getting certain people off the streets, and about ‘punishment’.

    The difference is illuminating. Philosophically, the left is saying ‘as people, how can we assist other people to be/do better?’ while the right is saying ‘criminals are other. As so  they are beyond redemption; they should be segregated from normal society.’

    The left’s efforts get characterised as those of a ‘nanny state’. Anyone against the left eagerly seizes on such catchphrases and they get repeated so much, any real meaning soon becomes lost.

    But what do the right’s efforts get characterised as? Perhaps the left just isn’t as good at one-liner denigrations.

    (Perhaps it should be.)

    But that’s beside the point. New Zealand has a high prison population because we have large disenfranchised minorities, and because the gap between rich and poor has been growing quickly over the last two decades.

    Just as wealthy people seem to be much more preoccupied with securing themselves and their property, they also seem to be much less willing to look at the possible causes of high offending rates. Partly because they are, themselves, partly responsible.

    I’m not defending criminal activity, by the way. I find violent crime utterly abhorrent. Physical violence immediately denies a victim their human rights. It’s prehistoric.

    But yes, it’s very effective. When you have nothing, or you have a drug habit, or when you’re bored out of your mind, it’s a relatively obvious and immediate option.

    So expect National to keep throwing people into every more crowded jails as they protect the farmers, the landed gentry and the business-owning classes from the other, while promising ‘better’ (as in lower) conditions that can be forced upon workers because of high unemployment.

    Does it make you feel proud?

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  4. Lefter #15 ~ Treason!

    June 15, 2009 by emweb

    In Lefter 10 ‘A Good War’, I said that “National’s efforts will expand an increasingly desperate unemployed sector which will work for less and less money and under more onerous conditions.”

    I also said “… instead of NZ trying to trade its way out of this recession, Prime Minister John Key will just follow his experience. Which means he’ll borrow to raise money while pursuing a right-wing agenda of making the lower classes poorer while rewarding his wealthy Pakeha cronies with more access to that wealth.”

    I hate it that I’m right in this case, but National’s first budget confirms exactly what I imagined back then. It’s just so commonly a right-wing response.

    For the record, I don’t care about scrapping future tax breaks – they were only going to benefit the wealthy anyway.

    I’ve also said before that it’s a shame this recession will give National license to push out the right-wing agenda much more quickly. I believed that National was going to tread softly for the first term to win a second, and then it was all right-wing guns ablaze. However, the recession has made all that subterfuge unnecessary as any measure, pronounced with faces grave, can now be blamed on the recession.

    The Herald reported that business has welcomed Budget measures. Surprise! So have the medical and science fraternities. So has the private school sector, that privileged breeding ground of National and Act supporters. (You know it’s true. Well, so does National). While most New Zealanders face cuts and unemployment, private schools get 30 million dollars more!
    However, union groups and public educators are among those not so impressed. This is also predictable. National would actually prefer that unions and their members simply evaporated. They virtually made it happen, too, a few years ago. ‘Workers have rights? Preposterous! That would be an impediment to profit.’

    Bill English also dealt to the Super fund. Does that surprise anybody, with National’s record? Muldoon did the very same thing, disenfranchising a generation of their old ages in the process.

    The tried and true path to negotiating a recession (although it may be a Depression soon) is to invest in skills, thereby stimulating the jobs market, or at least preparing for a turnaround. Infrastructure is ripe for investment too, and pays dividends in the future for the whole country. Instead, National is intent on merely propping up its class. While doing nothing for long-term or even immediate growth.

    Unemployment is forecast to rise. Of course it is – then business owners can demand lower wages and impose worse conditions. This is nirvana for the greedy, and see how they love it. It’s evil, frankly.

    Remember the ‘jobs summit’? Why did Bill English tell a meeting of business representatives a few days before the summit that good times were coming, because soon business ‘leaders’ would be able to ‘do anything’?

    It’s treason, if you ask me. Against most New Zealanders. And does anyone still trust John Key’s ‘management’ after Melissa Lee and Richard Worth? He’s been so keen to get on TV at the drop of a hat – suddenly he’s absent or running for cover.

    We’re screwed.

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments