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@Victor-Meldrew said in NZ Politics:
Is NZ really more left-wing than most other countries?
It's probably a historic perception from the days (almost a century ago) when we led the world in social reform.
We are certainly more left wing than the US and are early adopters of most social policies.
I did say most countries, not most rich countries, so my statement on that basis is accurate.If you isolate it to richer countries. More left wing than the Asian democracies, the US. Less than France, Holland and the Nordic countries.
The rest - unsure. Long time since I lived outside NZ. When I did NZ was way more left than UK. Still appears to be so to me at least.
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@Victor-Meldrew I think NZ is progressively becoming more left wing (boom-pish) but more so in the attitude that it should be up to the government to fix everything.
The emphasis on individual responsibility and identity is more and more diminishing into "group' responsibility and identity. Which all sounds great from a community perspective until you realize that with group responsibility there also arises group blame - regardless of whether the individuals in that group have done anything wrong or not...
Still this appears to be the way the entire Western world is going, though under Arden she certainly tried her best to make us more left wing than what we've ever seen before.
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@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
Arden she certainly tried her best to make us more left wing than what we've ever seen before.
You mean the Ardern who is arguably the most right-wing Labour Prime Minister that we have ever had?
More left wing than Savage, Fraser and Nash who created the welfare state?
More left wing than Kirk who banned the Boks, sent Frigates to Muroroa , set up the Waitangi Tribunal..?
More left wing than Lange - nuclear free, legalised gay sex, made Te Reo an official language, broadened the Waitangi Tribunal's focus to include historic claims?
More left wing than Clark with alcohol, smoking, same sex marriage, trade union and civil rights reforms. Who established the Supreme Court and abandoned the honour's system?Granted Cindy is probably going to be more left wing than Hipkins....
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@dogmeat Bah!! Don't you try and correct me with facts
I concede your point entirely. The people you mentioned did things along the lines of social reform that were on the left - granted more so than what Arden ever achieved.
However in a vain attempt to cover my historical ignorance I've never seen a PM try so hard to get people to be dependent on and unequivocally trust "the state".
Arden basically during covid took away everyone's rights and said 'do what I say otherwise you'll lose your job or be a second tier citizen in this country".
This is the closest NZ has ever been to a communist state, via laws enforced on us by the state.
Even more galling the reasons for doing it (saving us all from covid) now after the data has come out appear to have been based off false belief in the effectivity of the vaccine, on the effectiveness of lockdowns and appear to have as a whole generated more harm to society than good.
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@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
The emphasis on individual responsibility and identity is more and more diminishing into "group' responsibility and identity. Which all sounds great from a community perspective until you realize that with group responsibility there also arises group blame - regardless of whether the individuals in that group have done anything wrong or not...
Really good point.
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
Arden she certainly tried her best to make us more left wing than what we've ever seen before.
You mean the Ardern who is arguably the most right-wing Labour Prime Minister that we have ever had?
More left wing than Savage, Fraser and Nash who created the welfare state?
More left wing than Kirk who banned the Boks, sent Frigates to Muroroa , set up the Waitangi Tribunal..?
More left wing than Lange - nuclear free, legalised gay sex, made Te Reo an official language, broadened the Waitangi Tribunal's focus to include historic claims?
More left wing than Clark with alcohol, smoking, same sex marriage, trade union and civil rights reforms. Who established the Supreme Court and abandoned the honour's system?Granted Cindy is probably going to be more left wing than Hipkins....
Same sex marriage was a private members bill in the Key era . Clark bought in civil unions .She also sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan which caused the very left wing Alliance party to quit their coalition deal. Lange wasn’t really behind homosexual law reform that was Fran Wildes baby and the nuclear free policies were a sop to the left of the party while they restructured the economy along neoliberal lines. Geoffrey Palmer really opened the gate on the treaty of Waitangi when he was pm .
That’s not to say Ardern was particularly left wing . Ardern really stood for very little , whatever polled well and created the least fuss and or best overseas coverage . She was the first career politician we’ve ever had as pm ( you could argue English I guess) and it showed . Personally I think her and her team painted themselves into a corner with the covid laws and didnt have the brains to figure out what to do next .
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
Arden she certainly tried her best to make us more left wing than what we've ever seen before.
You mean the Ardern who is arguably the most right-wing Labour Prime Minister that we have ever had?
More left wing than Savage, Fraser and Nash who created the welfare state?
More left wing than Kirk who banned the Boks, sent Frigates to Muroroa , set up the Waitangi Tribunal..?
More left wing than Lange - nuclear free, legalised gay sex, made Te Reo an official language, broadened the Waitangi Tribunal's focus to include historic claims?
More left wing than Clark with alcohol, smoking, same sex marriage, trade union and civil rights reforms. Who established the Supreme Court and abandoned the honour's system?Granted Cindy is probably going to be more left wing than Hipkins....
I don't think left wing is "left" in the classic sense anymore. It doesn't focus on economics, and poverty takes a back seat to more "important issues" like transgenderism. It is more to do with the ivory tower, chardonnay crowd than economically depressed groups. Biden, Macron, Trudeau, and Ardern aren't Savage or Lange types by any stretch of the imagination.
I once saw Marama Davidson talk in parliament about child poverty long ago and thought she was on the ball. Sadly, it seems she'll riot for transgender activism but hungry kids aren't that important anymore. -
@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
Arden she certainly tried her best to make us more left wing than what we've ever seen before.
You mean the Ardern who is arguably the most right-wing Labour Prime Minister that we have ever had?
More left wing than Savage, Fraser and Nash who created the welfare state?
More left wing than Kirk who banned the Boks, sent Frigates to Muroroa , set up the Waitangi Tribunal..?
More left wing than Lange - nuclear free, legalised gay sex, made Te Reo an official language, broadened the Waitangi Tribunal's focus to include historic claims?
More left wing than Clark with alcohol, smoking, same sex marriage, trade union and civil rights reforms. Who established the Supreme Court and abandoned the honour's system?Granted Cindy is probably going to be more left wing than Hipkins....
For all of Ardern's socialism / left wing views, has there ever been another leader upon which the rich/poor divide has grown so much?
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Question - if none of those things that @dogmeat set out had been done by prior Governments, and the opportunity has arisen to all of them during Aderns time in power, which of them do you think she wouldn't have done?
My point is only that those guys just got there first and the fact that Adern didn't get to do them doesn't make her any more centrist.
Her clutch on control and narrative and message was pretty extraordinary to watch from my end.
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interesting the talk of this multi billion dollar investment, while other parts of NZ's infrastructure is so fragile and doesnt seem a plan going forward to future proof it - see Coromandel, Brynderwyns, parts of HB and Gisborne, am sure there are plenty of other examples too.
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@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
interesting the talk of this multi billion dollar investment, while other parts of NZ's infrastructure is so fragile and doesnt seem a plan going forward to future proof it - see Coromandel, Brynderwyns, parts of HB and Gisborne, am sure there are plenty of other examples too.
It is definitely needed, the harbour bridge is not in great shape. But there are many projects that desperately need to be done
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@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
This is the closest NZ has ever been to a communist state, via laws enforced on us by the state.
You clearly have no understanding of what a 'communist state' is.
These last few posts and a lot of the whole thread demonstrate that for many Adern will always be the devil because of her Covid response.
IMO she ran a pretty centrist government* but with a woke perspective, but it was all largely windrow dressing.
*MMP encourages centrist governments. Which opponents hate about it. Interestingly those who loathe MMP generally have no experience of FPP. Both systems have their flaws. For mine (as I did live in the FPP environment) MMP is a better system but the 5% threshold is too high for the NZ context. I'd rather see 6+ smaller parties which would mean you don't have 2 immovable blocks Nat/ACT versus Lab/Green and a dangerous kingmaker scenario.
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@canefan said in NZ Politics:
It is definitely needed, the harbour bridge is not in great shape. But there are many projects that desperately need to be done
I wouldn't have agreed that we need a 2nd Waitemata crossing until the state of the Bridge became known. The main congestion choke point is actually Spaghetti Junction not the bridge.
For that reason I favour a staged approach. Build a public transport / active mode alternative and encourage people out of their cars. Making it easier to get across the water will simply induce demand and create traffic chaos downstream which will quickly clog up the network again.
Leaving aside other regions I think Aucklands most pressing need is light rail to the North West as that is where most of the projected growth is planned and PT options are absolute shit.
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
This is the closest NZ has ever been to a communist state, via laws enforced on us by the state.
You clearly have no understanding of what a 'communist state' is.
These last few posts and a lot of the whole thread demonstrate that for many Adern will always be the devil because of her Covid response.
IMO she ran a pretty centrist government* but with a woke perspective, but it was all largely windrow dressing.
*MMP encourages centrist governments. Which opponents hate about it. Interestingly those who loathe MMP generally have no experience of FPP. Both systems have their flaws. For mine (as I did live in the FPP environment) MMP is a better system but the 5% threshold is too high for the NZ context. I'd rather see 6+ smaller parties which would mean you don't have 2 immovable blocks Nat/ACT versus Lab/Green and a dangerous kingmaker scenario.
MMP definitely wasn't installed with Winston Peters in mind
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@Windows97 said in NZ Politics:
This is the closest NZ has ever been to a communist state, via laws enforced on us by the state.
You clearly have no understanding of what a 'communist state' is.
I do - hence why I said it was "the closest NZ has ever been" not "NZ was" a communist state.
I mean that's kinda like me saying "Gracious this is the coldest NZ's ever been!" And you replying "Rubbish!! We're nowhere near -275 degrees".
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
@Windows97 First Labour government.
Adern's govt was less like a communist one than Rob Muldoons FFS.
This. Hers is the most divisive since his though.
She should be judged on the covid response, it was her one policy success and won her the 2020 election . The fact the restrictions went on far too long, were in some cases illegal and caused a massive transfer of wealth are on her too.
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Nice work if you can get it ...
A new tally of the cost of the controversial Three Waters programme shows that well over half of the responsible department’s spending has gone to contractors and consultants.
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) spent $94 million pursuing the programme from inception in mid-2020 to the end of December 2022. Consultants and contractors made up $56.87m of that total (including legal work). By comparison, departmental staff working on the programme cost $18.56m.
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@Tim said in NZ Politics:
Media Insider: Soper, Ardern farewell Parliament: 'Media didn't understand her, she didn't understand media'
Oh absolutely get fucked. Stroke it some more, NZ Herald. What pathetic nonsense.
Fuck, Right, Off .She has a bachelors degree in communications and public relations . Its like they are in a contest to see who can be the least credible. The media loved her and she played them with her empathetic look, hijabs and midday media conferences.
Oliver Hartwich who grew up in Germany when the wall was up said there were two parts of east germany -the north east and south east where the radio and tv signals from West Germany couldn't reach and the people there were only fed government proganda . The rest of both sides of the wall called these parts the valley of the clueless.
We are the valley of the clueless, there's so little diversity in our media here and they are so linked to the government now they are utterly worthless. You only have to look at how quickly the attacks on women on saturday moved out of the news cycle or the way Newshub lied about PP doing up her zip as evidence.Valley of the clueless https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/heres-why-dresden-was-nicknamed-valley-of-the-clueless/
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