I’ve seen a fair few threads asking about the New Zealand Labour Party and it’s leader Jacinda Ardern, given its historic win last night. Here’s a brief explainer for why she isn’t the second coming of Lenin (or even Michael Joseph Savage).
Ardern is our equivalent of Obama, or Biden, or Buttigieg. She’s very good at saying nothing and sounding meaningful about it. She talks about compassion and will even say that capitalism has failed, but when push comes to shove she walks the same neoliberal path that the Labour Party started down in 1984.
This should not come as a surprise to anyone. She worked as a senior policy advisor under war criminal Tony Blair after the Iraq war. Ardern is our version of Justin Trudeau. Foreigners swoon over her, but she’s a neoliberal through and through.
Here’s an article from our local left media outlet mocking this perception foreigners have of her.
International readers who are vaguely interested in New Zealand’s politics probably don’t actually care all that much that most of what was announced yesterday was heavily contested from many different and diverse perspectives. Going by much of that overseas coverage, it appears that what they’re really interested in reading about is an avatar for a better world, one that they wish they lived in. New Zealand, the country so fantastical that some people don’t even believe it really exists, is a beautiful dream for many people in countries like the USA and Britain that are governed by grotesque oafs.
While Labour has done alright in terms of handling the attack on the mosque in Christchurch, we can’t ignore the county’s racist refugee policy that would make Donald Trump and Australia blush.
Let’s get into the weeds. Prior to COVID, Labour’s budgets were perfunctory and third-way budget, not ‘transformational’ like they try to paint it.
Here’s what NZ socialist Morgan Godfrey has to say about the budget:
Labour's current conservatism reaches its peak in the unintentionally funny Budget Responsibility Rules (BRRs). Under the BRRs the government commits to paying down debt and keeping core Crown spending within certain limits. The Oxford English Dictionary will probably define “neoliberalism” as “the Budget Responsibility Rules” in its next edition. What’s striking, though, is not even English made a commitment like the BRRs, probably recognising they risked constraining any reformist agenda in a hypothetical fifth term. Remind me, who's on the left again?
Ardern’s Labour Government refused to deliver a capital gains tax in the midst of a housing crisis, after setting up a tax working group to recommend that very tax. Furthermore, she can’t even blame it on coalition partners, as she went on to rule out a capital gains tax in her political lifetime. So her recent outright victory in the 2020 election will do nothing for even marginally leftwards movement here, since the restrictions are self imposed.
Look to the attitudes of the unions that survived the 1984 Labour Government. On the eve of the recent budget delivery, all primary and secondary school teachers walked off the job in a mega strike.
This is a government that’s tied its own hands and refused to take on debt to rebuild infrastructure despite credit agencies saying it could comfortably borrow much more. Post COVID, the Government continues to underspend, especially on climate change compared to its peers.
Despite unemployment only looking to return to current levels by 2025, Labour has ignored the recommendations of the welfare working group they themselves commissioned, to immediately and significantly increase the amount paid to beneficiaries. In contrast, the Australian Liberals, their right wing party, doubled welfare payment amounts due to COVID.
The cherry on top is that our welfare agency regularly trawls through beneficiaries’ private text messages for nudes to make sure they aren’t fucking anyone. How’s that for compassion?
While Ardern is more than happy to front up to the cameras when facing crises from external sources, like pandemics, volcanoes, and terrorism, she’s notorious for hiding away when it’s the government’s actions that caused the crises.
Take for example land theft of the native Māori peoples. Faced with a land occupation, she staunchly refused to visit, despite multiple invitations.
Or when the state got filmed trying to take a newborn Māori baby from its mother in the birthing ward, leading outcry, Ardern, along with the Minister for Children, refused to watch the video, or read the resulting report of mothers’ experiences at the hands of the state.
This all leads to the left asking, if she’s going to govern like National, what’s even the point of Jacinda Ardern and the NZ Labour Party?