Aspirational fluff from Ardern

by Daphna Whitmore

Although women got the vote in the late 19th century, now well into the 21st century we still do not have pay equity. While overt discrimination against individual female employees is no longer legal or socially accepted  in New Zealand women’s wages still lag by 12 percent.

Far from leading change, parliament is often the last to come to the party when social movements gather momentum.  The successful case of  caregiver Kristine Bartlett shows gender pay inequity is coming under pressure. After being paid only $14.46 an hour despite 20 years working at the same rest home, Bartlett’s case established a legal principle that paying women in predominantly female occupations less than men in occupations with similar skills and responsibilities may be illegal under the Equal Pay Act of 1972.

The gender pay gap under Labour and National has barely budged

Following the Bartlett case National has introduced the Pay Equity Bill which would impose a number of new hurdles for women seeking pay parity. The bill is being opposed by all the parliamentary opposition and the

How can the poor folks stand such times and live

by Don Franks (Rewrite of Blind Alfred Reed song)

There was never a time when everything was cheap
But these days the cost of living is so steep
If you’re stuck on a benefit
You just know that you’ll be hit
Tell me – how can the poor folks stand such times and live?

Meritia used her platform for the poor
Like Oliver Twist, please sir, we want some more
The bourgeoisie wouldn’t let that ride
She was duly crucified
Tell me – how can the poor folks stand such times and live?

Not so long ago , Labour was little lead
Now everywhere you look is blazing red
Well, you can believe the dazzling spin
Just remember what class you’re in
Tell me – how can the poor folks stand such times and live?

Now in a few more days, we all get to vote
They say that means we’re all in the same boat
parliaments for the smug well dressed
Its not there for the dispossessed
Tell me – how can the poor folks stand such times and live?

 

Labour’s fuel tax is a case of GST all over again

by Daphna Whitmore

I’m a big fan of rail and will bore anyone who will listen to me about the joy of no longer owning a car in Auckland. I walk five  minutes from home to a train station and travel happily free from the nightmare that is Auckland gridlock.  Auckland as a city for humans needs more electric trains and light rail.

Labour’s plan for transport in Auckland has just been announced and has unashamedly been lifted from the pages of Greater Auckland (formerly TransportBlog). The people from Greater Auckland have done a huge amount of research and have been putting the case every day since 2015 for a world class public transport system in Auckland. It is good to see their ideas being adopted.

What is not great is that Labour will introduce a regional fuel tax to raise money for the programme. This flat tax will mean more indirect taxation, and is inherently anti-working class. Again Labour’s fake concern for the poor is on display.

Auckland’s gridlock is said to cost $1.9b a year in lost productivity. That is a loss for businesses. For the workers stuck in traffic it is a loss in precious time and a loss of enjoyment of life. Labour will lift the financial loss from businesses and have it borne by the people in cars. 

Labour and the politics of bourgeois respectability & low horizons

Epitomising sanctimonious bourgeois respectability

by Phil Duncan

Labour is, politically, a respectable bourgeois party.

Sociologically, it is peopled largely by respectable liberal middle class people.  Just take a look at the backgrounds of Labour MPs, the party’s top managers and new folks on the Labour party list for September.

They are overwhelmingly people who are thoroughly removed from the reality of poverty and people struggling to make ends meet.

They want all the poor people – people struggling to survive on the smell of an oily rag – to be respectably bourgeois like themselves. Such well-behaved poor people can then be grateful supplicants, looked after by the patronising Labour do-gooders.

And poor people who help themselves – like to a few extra bucks to feed their kids, as Metiria Turei did – are to be roundly condemned by respectable bourgeois like Jacinda Ardern and her idiot fan club.

Reminds me of the

Jacinda – Labour’s most pleasant leader

by Daphna Whitmore

For Labour’s 34 MPs the odds of becoming leader are quite high. Yesterday, for the fifth time in nine years, the party dipped into its talent puddle to present a new saviour. It was Jacinda Ardern’s turn to work some magic. 

In the press gallery expectations were not high as Jacinda stepped up for her first press conference as leader. The reporters seemed genuinely amazed when Jacinda showed she could speak fluently about nothing much, and could even inject humour into the void.

Four months ago she was elected to be Labour’s shiny new deputy leader. With her face beaming down from the hoardings alongside the last leader, what’s-his-name, she was to bring some X-factor. Somehow the magic didn’t happen and the polls fell further. That was yesterday; today Labour is optimistic.

Labour is the most optimistic

Yet more bad news for Labour. . .

Note how the current National government, which came to power in the wake of the global financial crisis, has generally spent slightly more (as a % of GDP) on health and education than the previous Labour government (which enjoyed good economic times and substantial budget surpluses)

by Phil Duncan

The latest ColmarBrunton poll is not good news for National, showing their support dropping by 2.2 percentage points to 45.2%.  This would make it very hard for them to form a government with their current coalition partners – the Maori Party, Act and United Future.

However, the news is far worse for Labour.  Less than 8 weeks out from the general election, they have dropped a further 2.3 percentage points to just 24.1 support.  Their leader, Andrew Little, is only fourth in the preferred prime minister stakes.  Not only is he on less than a third of the support registered for National Party prime minister Bill English, he is now well behind New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and even behind his own deputy-leader Jacinda Ardern.

The only traction Labour seems able to get is in reverse.  Meanwhile New Zealand First continues to expand support, as do the Greens.

If Labour falls just a couple more percentage points then Little could actually be out of parliament, because he is only a List MP; he hasn’t been able to win a constituency seat.

Given that we are at the end of the third term of National, Labour’s position in the polls is especially dismal for them.  Can anyone remember a government that, at the end of its third term, was as popular as National and an opposition that was as unpopular as Labour?  It certainly hasn’t happened since Labour and National became the two dominant parties post-1935.

While a section of Labourites are in denial, pretending the polls results are not accurate, Little himself knows better and has said he is prepared to resign.  But Labour’s woes go far deeper than who happens to be the leader.  After all, they’ve had four leaders in less than nine years and what has happened?  Under Phil Goff, Labour wallowed, so he was replaced by David Shearer; under Shearer, Labour wallowed, so he was replaced by David Cunliffe; under Cunliffe, Labour wallowed, so he was replaced by Andrew Little; under Little, Labour has wallowed; in fact, it’s at its lowest point in decades.

Running deeper than the inability of successive leaders to grow Labour support is that there has been an ongoing erosion of its party vote in many of its old general roll heartland areas.  In 2014, for instance, more blue collar workers voted National than Labour and National now has the party vote in traditional Labour seat after Labour seat.

Put in short: the big majority of the working class don’t see Labour as

Have the Greens gone ‘radical’?

by Phil Duncan

Well, according to the media – and there seems to be quite a consensus – the answer to the question above is a resounding ‘yes’.  According to Tim Murphy, co-editor of Newsroom, policies adopted at last weekend’s Green Party AGM have “placed the Greens on the risky side of radical. Probably just where they want to be.”

According to TV1 political editor Corin Dann, the Greens have made “a bold statement on social justice”.  On Spin-Off, Simon Wilson suggested, “For the left, which was looking like it was going to watch another election slide by, it was the most impressive statement of the year.”  Columnist Stacey Kirk argues, Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei, is “counting on New Zealanders to not only voice concern over inequality, but to collectively do something about it that may go against the nature of their very core.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most hyperbolic response has come from