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PoliticsOctober 19, 2017

Jacinda Ardern and the left look boldly to the future

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Simon Wilson does a little dreaming, because why not?

I’m looking forward to the world celebrating our new prime minister – because what a magnificent thing for us to be known for. I’m looking forward to all the interthings – the intergenerations and genders and ethnicities and urban/provincialities and all the rest – that the combined party leaderships of the new government represent, because our government suddenly looks a lot more like all of us. I’m looking forward to climate change being taken seriously, with good strong targets and a unified, inclusive, nationwide approach to meeting them. I’m looking forward to a more evolved form of MMP government, one that shows us more of the empowering possibilities of our chosen form of democracy. I’m looking forward to the prime minister stretching out her hand, palm up, the way she did to Mark Richardson on the AM Show, only this time she’ll do it to Donald Trump. At APEC.

I’m looking forward to a proper commitment to building tens of thousands of affordable houses in Auckland, for the community and with the community. I’m looking forward to light rail, to regional rail, to a transformation in the way we see our cities working. I’m looking forward to a government that works with this city and not against it. I’m looking forward to a big, really big, powerful campaign on domestic violence and I’d like it to be led by the All Blacks and I think they should make Jacinda an honorary member to make it happen. Because if it was okay for John Key to be an honorary All Black, why not her and why not for a good reason like that?

I’m looking forward to that talented new caucus of Labour shining, and those talented people in the Greens finally – finally! – getting their chance. And I’m looking forward to watching Winston make the most of his wise old years in parliament, because I’ve seen nothing in the last few weeks to suggest he won’t. And I’m looking foward to his colleagues stepping up, because I bet they can. I’m looking forward to having a decent minister of health and to the day when we really have abolished rheumatic fever, and to the day the staff at our emergency departments don’t feel driven in their desperation to put out “full up” signs. I’m looking forward to trading relationships that won’t bring the world down around our ears just because they are renegotiating some of Tim Groser’s cosy self-aggrandising deals. I’m looking forward to having an economy that really, truly embraces a future that is not in commodity agriculture.

I’m looking forward to greater respect for Māori, building on what’s good about our race relations and being courageous enough to tackle what’s not. I’m looking forward to more educational opportunity for those who miss out now, and warmer homes, and better wraparound primary healthcare, and fewer people in prison, and far, far more state-run rehabilitation programmes – in literacy and other life skills – for those who are in prison. I’m looking forward to the day when mental health services are not in crisis and we do not have the most appalling rates of suicide.

I’m looking forward to once more having a prime minister who understands the value of the arts. I’m looking forward to Clarke Gayford being the First Man, because I like fish and he’s a funny guy. I’m looking forward to the next National Party conference, where they acknowledge that they lost their way, that if you lie and scaremonger, it isn’t the best or only way to win an election, and it is shameful to try. I’m looking forward to living in a more inclusive society, and to the richness and rewards that will flow to us all when that happens.

Because it’s okay to dream. That’s where good things start. I’m looking forward. Right now, today, I’m just looking forward. I’m looking forward to doing this.

Keep going!
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PoliticsOctober 19, 2017

Change is here. But is it the kind you hoped for?

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In retrospect, it seems obvious that New Zealand First would never have chosen National. Now forward-looking Labour and Greens will need to learn to work with a party that would love to turn the clock back 40 years, writes Morgan Godfery.

There are only two kinds of politicians, insiders and outsiders, and then there’s Winston Peters: the two-time deputy Prime Minister who denounces the country’s “political establishment”; the bloke who covets power and the company of the powerful, but insists he represents “the forgotten people,” his people; and the former National MP holding together the incoming Labour government.

Winston Peters is a mystery.

Then again, he kind of isn’t, because who didn’t see this coming?

National and New Zealand First are like liquid and gas. National, smooth and slick, the party for liberals with board positions and housing portfolios, could never pair with New Zealand First, the party of blustering conservatives yearning for a return to the social democratic state. I mean, can you imagine Winston Peters, the longest serving MP in the current Parliament, taking orders from Paula Bennett, her of the panini and bowl latte?

In truth, for all the talk of National’s “moral mandate” and “moral authority” Winston’s purpose in politics is burning the world National built to the ground, from its immigration policy to its trade policy. New Zealand First voters are the people who despise National’s Ruth Richardson, the finance minister responsible for opening the economy, privatising the state sector and putting thousands of people out of work in the 1990s. Key and English are scarcely better, the cosmopolitans who opened the borders, an act representing New Zealand First’s ideological losses today and their voters’ demographic irrelevance tomorrow.

New Zealand First voters are the people who feel as if they went to sleep in one country and woke up in another.

And so Labour and Jacinda Ardern were the best – only – option, the team that could work together to help restore parts of the strong state communitarianism of Norman Kirk and the closed conservatism of Rob Muldoon. “We believe capitalism must regain its human face,” Peters told reporters before making his announcement, sounding positively Sanders-like. “We had a choice for a modified status quo or for change,” he continued, “and that’s why in the end we chose a coalition government with New Zealand First and the New Zealand Labour party”.

There it is. Think 100,000 new homes, three years of free tertiary education, billions more for the health system, investment in public transport, and at the very least rhetorical attacks against capitalism. For some this may seem like Winston is pulling a fast one, betraying his National roots and ignoring his conservative instincts, but this is Winston returning home. And home is the social democratic state.

In truth, National left Winston, moving further and further to the neoliberal right. But Winston never left National, at least not the National Party of Holland, Holyoake and Muldoon.  The question, then, at least for supporters of this new government, is how do you work with a bloke who would turn the clock back decades?

Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First might disagree on, say, immigration, with Labour and New Zealand First preferring fewer migrants and the Greens preferring more, but there’s one thing they can agree on: neoliberalism – it sucks. If one thing can unite each party, it’s that. Let’s do this, or something like that.

But wait there's more!