- cross-posted to:
- newzealand@lemmy.nz
- cross-posted to:
- newzealand@lemmy.nz
Gap between left and right blocks has opened up, but NZ first seems likely to make it to parliament, which could make coalition negotiations interesting.
Labour is the big loser, and they should be asking serious questions about their campaign. Most of the other parties are fairly stable, with departing Labour voters seemingly moving fairly evenly among the other major parties.
They really should reverse their stance on a wealth tax. Both of their coalition partners have it and surveys are showing a majority of the population are in support of it.
As popular as Chris Hipkins is, his choice of policies in ruling out a wealth tax, and removing GST off fruits and veges - both of which have gone against his revenue and finance ministers have probably lost him a lot of core centre left voters.
Yeah, I think the GST off fruit and veges was a major blunder. Even if it makes sense as a policy (which is far from clear), it was their first major policy announcement. Basically, their headline policy of the campaign. But it really doesn’t do much for cost of living… it just makes them look like they have no real solutions. Even if they didn’t want to go with a wealth or capital gains tax, they could have come up with something better than that.
It’s Labour’s equivalent of National’s “we’ll build a road” opening gambit last election.
I support them destroying themselves. If their core voters abandon them, that will teach them a lesson. Two years of failure and we’re supposed to what… respect them?
Honestly, I think Labour’s biggest problem is they’ve been in power for two terms, and apart from managing Covid very well, have achieved very little and failed to deliver so much. I have little to no faith in their ability to deliver anything at all at this point.
Unashamedly stolen from a reddit post from a year ago, not my list:
Here’s some of what Labour’s delivered:
Record low unemployment
5.6% real GDP growth
149,000 new homes
Matariki
Abortion decriminalisation
1st year fees free
lower deaths during global pandemic
end state house sell off
ban letting fees
end tax loopholes for landlords
foreign buyer ban
limit rent increases to 1/yr
end no cause evictions
save main trunk line electrification
Mana in mahi
lower prison population.
35% increase to minimum wage
1200 more police officers
Transmission Gully
25c less petrol excise
RUC cut
Half price public transport
govt debt over $70b less than forecast at the start of the pandemic
record first homebuyer market share
free apprenticeships & trades training
Winter Energy Payment
Best Start Payment
Working for families increases
Benefit increases
66,500 children out of poverty
free school lunches to 200,000 kids a day
ban single use plastic bags
School Upgrade Package to 2000 schools
Cheaper/free Dr visits for 600,000
Zero Carbon Act
Clean Car Package
Remove NCEA fees
doubled funding for search and rescue
Anti-loan sharks law
UK FTA
Right to meal breaks
Right for film workers to collectively bargain
49,000 homes consents in the last year
record state house build
1500 Housing First places
pipeline of $57b in public infrastructure over the next five years (schools, hospitals, roads, public transport etc)
10 days sick leave
Doubled carbon pollution cost, brought back cap to ETS
free Dr visits to 13yrs
Equal pay legislation to enable pay equity claims
Healthy Homes Standards
Record investment in hospital staff and infrastructure
Banned military style semi automatics
Led global fight against extremism on social media
10 year Bright Line test
Restored funding for night classes
Restored Training Incentive Allowance
Record Pharmac funding boost
Jobs for Nature Scheme
Largest DOC funding boost in 20 years
Maori housing scheme, build/repair 1000 homes
Largest ever disability funding boost
300,000 primary care mental health sessions, w 800 staff
Restarted Super Fund contributions
Hundreds of regional projects through the Provincial Growth Fund
Eradicating mycoplasma bovis
Lifted benefit abatement thresholds & other improvements
Remove building consents for small additions
Force councils to allow densification
Roads deaths down 16% to pre Joyce levels
Definitely stuff to argue in here, but the rhetoric of “Labour has achieved nothing” is false. They have done plenty of good, it is just small incremental changes. Do I think they should have done more? Absolutely. Would I vote for them? The jury is still out. But please stop thinking they have achieved nothing “other than managing COVID”.
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There is a lot of things I would have liked to see Labour do. CGT is a big one, adjust tax brackets to inflation is another.
However, I haven’t seen Labour do anything that actively made the CoL crisis worse. Some of National’s policies will do exactly that.
ignoring overwhelmingly popular wealth tax
Citation needed.
There’s so many things in there that Labour had nothing to do with, and many more that are incredibly unimpressive.
They did not build 150k houses, our building industry did.
Transmission gully, for example, was authorised and begun under national, things like minimum wage, RUC and excise duty cuts are very easy to do, and a bunch more are just handing out money for various reasons.
That list is the equivalent of seeing “power steering” listed as a feature on a car for sale, it’s kinda sad it’s considered a feature, and you know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
If Labour gets the blame for the cost of living crisis, which is a global issue, and the housing crisis, which stems from failures of multiple government’s, why can they not claim things that, while easy, happened under their watch?
They did not build 150k houses, our building industry did
That is always the case, though. People say they failed at their promise to build houses, but when it is pointed out how many were built you say “that wasn’t them”? You can’t have it both ways.
Transmission gully, for example, was authorised and begun under national, things like minimum wage, RUC and excise duty cuts are very easy to do, and a bunch more are just handing out money for various reasons.
Transmission gully I agree with. The rest are small changes, but changes nonetheless. You (and others) claim they have done nothing, and this shows that isn’t true. You could argue they haven’t done enough, and you’d hey a resounding agreement from most, but you can’t argue they have done nothing.
Also, “just handing money out” is an incredibly naive take.
That list is the equivalent of seeing “power steering” listed as a feature on a car for sale, it’s kinda sad it’s considered a feature, and you know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
“This car has no features” “It has power steering, which is a feature” “That’s not good enough, every car has that”
Stop moving the goalposts.
I mean, if every car has it, it’s not a feature, is it?
The housing claim is especially dishonest, if they claim to have built X number of houses, you’d be expect them to be a large part of the process, either building the house as an organisation, or at the very least being the ones ordering and paying for the property. Even claiming Kiwibuild homes is a tenuous claim, as they’re built for a customer, and the GOVT is merely the guarantor.
Labour has no right to claim those houses as an achievement.
I mean, if every car has it, it’s not a feature, is it?
So what you mean then is “this card does not have anything above what we expect”. This is not the same as "it has no features.
Labour has not done as much as you expected. Sure, to this i agree. But to claim they have done nothing is simply false.
Labour has no right to claim those houses as an achievement.
Either the government has no hand in the building, in which case you cannot blame them for “not building houses”, or the government does have a hand in building houses, in which case you cannot accuse them of not building homes.
You cannot have it both ways.
Either the government has no hand in the building, in which case you cannot blame them for “not building houses”, or the government does have a hand in building houses, in which case you cannot accuse them of not building homes.
I’m genuinely baffled as to what your point is here.
Nearly all of these things are just tweaks that can be achieved by signing some documents. The country has gone backwards under Labour and it will go backwards under National too. I’m going to wait for boomers to die off before I consider voting in another election. There’s no point in voting for parties that will protect landlords and stamp out legislation that will allow for new builds. Which is all of them.
Banned military style semi automatics
They did this to protect themselves not to protect us.
Nearly all of these things are just tweaks that can be achieved by signing some documents. The country has gone backwards under Labour and it will go backwards under National too. I’m going to wait for boomers to die off before I consider voting in another election. There’s no point in voting for parties that will protect landlords and stamp out legislation that will allow for new builds. Which is all of them.
I disagree that it has gone backwards because of Labour. They have not done enough, but they have done something. I hard agree National will head backwards.
They did this to protect themselves not to protect us.
Disagree.
I’d have preferred it if they’d just done nothing to be honest. By “doing something” but still changing nothing, it just gives them an excuse to nag for votes again, which they don’t deserve.
They didn’t “change nothing” though. They have changed many things for the better. See the list above. Even if you leave off stuff that’s marginal, there are still plenty of good positive changes that have been made whole Labour was in government.
Many of Nationals policies will have a negative impact on society. How many labour policies have harmed society?
If those voter’s moved left instead its not a loss for the left. The problem is that it didn’t win any voters from the right.
The right’s lead over the left is around 5 points, which is decent but not unassailable, especially factoring standard levels of polling error. i.e. based on these numbers, a left-bloc win is probably just outside the standard margin of error. But larger errors are entirely possible, and have happened before.
I also think there’s a possibility of undecided voters breaking left, given that cost of living is such an important issue, and National are releasing some more right-oriented policies lately (e.g. tough on beneficiaries).
Smart money is obviously on a National/Act win (with or without NZ first), but it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.
Just my reckons of course…
Is it immoral to vote for NZ First just to see the chaos?
Like this?
That is so incredibly relavent, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t created specifically for this election 😅
Yeah, I think it got posted in reference to Trump winning in 2016. So I guess it applies well to politics in general 🤣
Save it for the ‘i told you so’ election in 4 years time?
Do you want a Trump? Because this is how you get a Trump.
Given all three are competing for cruelest beneficiary policy my view would be yes
Nope. Destabilising the incumbents is a moral duty.
I did exactly this a couple of elections ago, I forget which.
There could be some strategic voting for National to keep NZ First out of government, similar to the last election when more people voted for Labour to keep the Greens out.
There could be, although there’s not much evidence that in 2020 people who would have voted National strategically voted for Labour to keep the Greens out (at least in large enough numbers to matter). The media latched onto that as an interesting narrative, but there was no basis to it.
As a left-leaning numbskull I’m struggling between conscience and strategy votes this time - I hate it all.
Strategy shouldn’t be much of an issue… If National are in govt, ACT will be as well… in 2020 Labour had the chance of (and eventually did) govern alone, so a strategic vote for Labour by right-wing people could make sense. It doesn’t really make much sense in this election. Sure, ACT could end up a bit smaller if enough people did it, but it’s not likely to make much difference in coalition negotiations.
One of the big advantages of MMP is that you don’t need to vote strategically so much (for party vote at least). So just vote for the party you like the most - the only consideration is whether they might make it across the threshold.
Thanks, but there’s no way I’d vote NAct, it’s more whether top would make it >5%, or should I support labour so they can keep fucking up around the margins…
I have big issues with each party, presently
Ah right, fair enough. Yeah, TOP probably pretty unlikely to get over 5% or win an electorate. But if you really don’t like any of the other parties, it’s still worth voting for them.
Ooh boy, Labour really have taken a dive in the last few polls, that’s quite incredible.
Labour shouldn’t have run a campaign. They should have let the Green Party take their place. Having Labour run again is just embarrassing.
Marama Davidson is the best spokesperson National could ask for, in my view. They should just stand aside and let her do her thing.
The greens have 2 very good MPs in James Shaw and Chloe Swarbrick but their party is so messed up. I would not vote for them as long as they have the criteria that a co-leader needs to be a woman, and one of Māori descent.
Ouch, that hurts!