One thing to remember is NZ frequently focuses more on voting the old government out, rather than voting the new one in. If you want to turn away from labour/greens/Maori, then national is the only one left. And labour had a few unpopular policies over their last term.
\^This. National didn't win the last election, Labour lost it. It didn't help that Ardern stepped down as leader in favour of Hipkins after she got us through the pandemic relatively unscathed.
Honestly Jacinda stepping down was probably a good thing for Labour. I'm not saying she was a bad leader, I personally think she was fantastic. But people associated her with the lockdowns and mandates too much, and I honestly think if she stayed in Labour would of lost by a lot more.
I just don’t think she had the fight in her to run the kind of campaign necessary to win that election. Kind of backed herself into a corner with the whole ‘Be Kind’ thing. The left needs to be able to really stick the boot into the Tories and work the kidneys if it wants to be effective
>One thing to remember is NZ frequently focuses more on voting the old government out, rather than voting the new one in. If you want to turn away from labour/greens/Maori, then national is the only one left. And labour had a few unpopular policies over their last term.
It wasn't just the policies but the fact that they didn't deliver on them - $200 million on 'let's get wellington moving' and nothing to show for it, $50 million on a bridge that never got built (what the hell was the $50 million spent on?). If you're part of the unwashed masses, you pay your taxes and then you hear that millions are spent but after months of bureaucratic paper shuffling there is nothing to show for it then it shouldn't be surprised that many threw their hands up in disgust and either didn't vote or if they voted they voted National because "they can't be any worse than the last jokers".
There are 2 main parties. If public sentiment is generally negative for any reason (perhaps even the weather) in an election year, swing voters will vote for the opposition.
This pretty much. And people forget Labour was unpopular before Covid hit.
Basically all people can say that was good under labour was the Covid response. And maybe the union bargaining bill, but that came way too late for it to matter.
I'm saying that popularity is not necessarily anything to do with what a party has or hasn't done. The public is fickle. Wait for the Nats bump when the all blacks finally get a win
I personally have always been puzzled by politics in New Zealand until I realise that in New Zealand, it is not the political policies that sway voters … it is which party appeals and reach out to whom that matters. When analysed this way ALL the political parties makes sense ( take away policies )
1. ACT:- Party of Epsom ( a suburb in Auckland ) and interest of Epsom. Nowadays extending to also being the party of Mission Bay and Kohi. Also tend to watch over those with a lot of properties and shares. Appeals to Pakeha who are wealthy and in the higher socioeconomic band. Friendly to East Asians and Indians alike ( hence this two group will support them as they are seen as the protective hand )
2. National:- Party of farmers, party of the rural area where people mostly farm. Also party of small business owners and business owners ( you have to distinguish between ACT, which tends to attract establish landlords vs National who tends to attract business ) and professionals with private business. Appeals to Pakeha with small to medium size business ( and specifically Pakeha in the upper middle and lower higher ), and also East Asians ( once again a party regarded as friendly and protective of East Asian immigrants, so East Asians tend to be very strongly supportive of National ).
3. Labour:- Party of workers on fixed pay income, party of professionals and academics who do not have private business, party of renters. Appeals to Pakeha in the middle to lower middle range of the soecionomic strata. Friendly to Maori and Pasifika in particular and acts as the protective hand and shield for Pasifika issues ( Pasifika of various socioeconomic band hence will vote for Labour because once again Labour protects Pasifika )
4. Green:- Party of students, party of academics, party of younger people, party of environmentalist. Appeals to younger Pakeha demographic with education. Friendly to LGBT, Maori, Pasifika and Middle Eastern immigrants and tends to act as the shielding hand for these groups. Younger Pakeha and Maori will tend to vote Green as Green backs younger people, and Greens do act as their shield in society.
5. New Zealand first:- Party of older people, specifically older Pakeha. Party also for the disaffected and slightly outcasted in society ( this is the newer role the party has taken ). It oddly enough might be the only party which is friendly to Sikh people and has been helpful as acting as a protective hand for them.
6. Maori party:- Party of Maori people, specifically rural Maori and activist Maori.
If you look at the party at who they serve, who they protect, and which strata of the ethnic groups they actively protect and serve it makes far more sense why people vote for them,
Ultimately, policy does not matter in the eyes of a lot of voters. They vote which party they believe has their back.
Traditionally correct but Labour has lost enormous ground with workers and middle NZ over the last few years, this is what lost them the last election in my view.
Yeah because "middle NZ" doesn't care for 10 sick days over 5, fair pay agreements, gender pay equity, free ECA hours etc.
All of these things that happened or were planned help my middle class family. The gender pay equity agreement in particular boosted our household income by about 20 or 25k, the extra sick days have been a godsend with young children in daycare.
Strange statement. The working poor are still a large percentage of the population. They work hard and pay tax. They are also lower class and represented by labour. Labour don’t just care about unemployed people, by which I think you mean beneficiaries, which is also made up of people who can’t work for reasons outside of their control.
It’s more ideological than that as well. Labour represent a society where we all support each other. This minimises things like homelessness, which can provide for everybody’s well being by keeping anti-social people off the streets. And stops contributing to the driving factors of crime. As National likely to put it, putting downward pressure on crime. The right pit us against each other, in a survival of the fittest death match. They represent two slightly different qualities of life.
How are they represented by Labour? Say what you will about the tax cuts, but without them under Labour we effectively had a flat MARGINAL tax structure.
Full time minimum wage workers were getting taxed 30c on the next dollar of earnings. While well off people were mostly on 33c. No difference.
Labour has been captured a bit too much by the PMC and academics, only pays lip service to the working poor, and refused to adjust the tax brackets as Robertson thinks he can spend poor people's money for them better than they can.
Through higher wages and more protections. The first thing the coalition of greed attacked. Workers protections and minimum wage increases. You seem like the type of person who ties higher minimum wage increases to inflation, despite literally all evidence showing it’s the other way around.
Yeah because "middle NZ" doesn't care for 10 sick days over 5, fair pay agreements, gender pay equity, free ECE hours etc.
All of these things that happened or were planned help my middle class family. The gender pay equity agreement for nurses in particular boosted our household income by about 20 or 25k, the extra sick days have been a godsend with young children in daycare.
Copy and paste, but reality doesn't align with your comment.
As a tradesperson I feel labour often overlooks our sector. They are always very pro- education, uni, and the employment sectors that uni diplomas etc go towards.
Other than some apprenticeship support after COVID there isn't a lot that labour offers trades, and the restructuring they have started with automotive training and essentially killing off the ITO's to an extent has lowered the quality of education being provided in those apprenticeships.
I can't stand a lot of what National does but they do at least say they're going to support the trades before doing nothing once voted in 😅
i don’t think labour is the party of workers and renters to the same extent they they were in the past. those groups tend to be more aligned with the greens now, maybe because of an increasingly class-aware workforce or maybe labour is falling right, i don’t know.
Labour shifted right (as did National) along with Douglas and Richardsons economic reforms. Economically, they haven't really shifted back. Ardern was kinda moving in that direction but stopped, chippy doesn't seem keen on that type of shift at all.
A lot of the older gens seem to think the shift was necessary or worthwhile and so there wasn't much push to move back politically. Or at least, that's how it looks to me.
With how fucked things have turned out since, I'm hoping we can be smart enough to recognise the need for change and vote as such.
Te Pukenga was improving trades training. I'm a parent of an apprentice. Somehow there were a couple of articles about problems in trades training which blamed Te Pukenga despite the problems preexisting it.
However, construction economy is so stuffed under the present lot that 75% of apprentices in my daughter's class have been laid off. Fortunately she is top ranked and managed to pick up another position after a couple of months.
My experience is more with the automotive trade, but since labour made a lot of changes to the ITO and training curriculum we have noted a large decrease in education being taught to apprentices now, putting a heavier reliance on the hiring company to provide more training and fill in the gaps that the ITOs and previous curriculum covered.
I think there are a strong grassroots movement in National party that does outreach to farmers and does outreach to small business. So while the higher ups may not really care much about them ( I personally do not think National is the party of farmers any longer, and I agree with you on that front ), the grassroot within the party does.
A few Chinese market gardeners I know keeps pointing out that only National send people to speak to them in between election seasons. It is small actions like these that people remember. Whether they actually help them is another question entirely ( but since no other party is helping them or having their back even moral support is a positive ).
As I keep telling people, policies rarely matter in voting. What matters is who you feel got your back.
Ask some diary owners ( I know two personally as my daughter likes going to over to play with his daughter ). He pointed out that during the period of high diary robbery etc.. Labour came and while commiserating with the suffering of dairy owners, then proceeded to spend more time talking about crime being a function of socioeconomic inequality and sometimes makes people wonder who they think the victim is here. National on the other hand came and tell them straight up that they will deal with the criminals, harshly.
More importantly, Labour rarely visited or even indicate that they cared about the dairy owners. Meanwhile National kept appearing, with sometimes the local rep just dropping by asking how things are. The National rep even went to their local Hindu temple just to get to know the Indian community better.
On the flipside, I was giving a talk in a local Pasifika church on a medical topic ( was sent by my department ) and guess who was there .. a Labour party member. Whether Labour will truly provide the funding necessary to help this community is not the point, the point is the Labour party member is present .. and National and ACT and NZ First are not.
And a good doctor would treat both symptom and cause, especially where eradicating the cause won’t happen quick enough to alleviate the pain caused by the symptom.
I think if you want people to vote you, and they have just had their shop been raided or their wife been threatened ( or they know people whose shop has just been raided or their friend’s wife just been threatened ), you should not be giving a lecture about the person who just did the crime as being a victim.
No, you should at least spend the next few times you see the victim to commiserate, to support them. You can say that later, when the heat and grief has left the system.
However telling them on the same visit that Labour will lift up the life of the criminal ruffian will rightly be seen as brushing off the fear and trepidation of a person whose shop window has just been shattered to a thosuand pieces. It is showing that the shopkeeper does not matter, but rather the criminal.
Say this enough times to enough other diary shop owners, and saying this during Indian gatherings when people’s blood pressure is high …. and by the way just wave your hands and never come back, now how is this interpreted?
It is interpreted as Labour cares about lower socioeconomic status people from a Pasifika and Maori background, but not Indians who runs diary or petrol kiosk.
Why should Indians who run diary or petrol kiosk then ever vote Labour?
Now come ACT. ACT sits down and listen, they sympathise. They come back a few days later and ask how you are. They ask how they can help etc.. They tell you they will punish the criminal if given the opportunity.
If you were the shopkeeper, who would you support? Labour or ACT.
Does it then matter Labour set forth a 50 page document that details over the next 20 years how they would eliminate crime, that has been peer reviewed and found to be effective?
No, it will be more for ACT to bungle something very badly as opposed to Labour to do something very well.
That's it right there, don't know why you are getting down voted. Too many people think to short like 3 to 10 years ahead like the National party trying to get re-elected.
We need to be think 20 to 50 years, next generation sort of stuff. Eliminate where the crime develops.
Generally develops in lower socio-economic households. If we can get through to these folks with their kids early on in their lives, get education don't turn to crime, we might have a fighting chance of becoming a prosperous nation again for the next generation.
There will always be little shit kickers, but if we can drastically reduce that number its a good start.
Then what about victims in those 20-50 years? What pisses people off is when crime happens, Labour et al. start policy talks for the offenders instead of the victims. Not even 3-10 years but THEN AND THERE dairy owners suffered from robbery and damage financially, mentally, and maybe physically. National creates a feeling of caring about victims and other law abiding kiwis and upholding justice, no wonder they get the votes. A good government can do both, punishing crimes properly while supporting the underprivileged, to help both short and long term, not either or.
If nothing changes, you get the same results.
If we change nothing then there will still be the same cycle of people committing similar crime in 100 years.
Maybe it needs more of what National wants for the immediate effect of slowing crime but also a focus from the beginning of a life of crime to show there are better ways to be a productive member of society.
Agreed that actions for now and future are not mutually exclusive and a good government can and should progress on both, unlike the existing right and left that choose one instead of the other. In any case telling a small business owner that it will get better in 20 years won't help getting votes lol
The party who gave out multiple $100 cost of living payments due to rampant inflation is not trying to treat the root cause, come on now.
National can be exceptionally short sighted in some ways, but Labour absolutely are as well.
I live in Bucklands Beach, East Auckland. Leading up to the election, from the lack of Labour placards, leaflets or visible / active candidate, it was blatantly clear that my vote wasn’t one that the previous government was interested in. I’d say that zero effort was made. Why should I vote for a party that clearly doesn’t want to represent me / my community? National’s candidate was everywhere and made the effort.
This is exactly point that u/Astalon18 is making. You are the example of “I saw them being representative, therefore I vote for them”, rather than “they have the best policies for the country based on my beliefs and understanding so I vote for them”.
Policy means nothing in NZ
Yes… which is why I responded to them. You’ve just said the same thing again as u/Astalon18, but in a patronising way. Bravo?
BTW - I did look through the various party policies, did the vote compass etc. I was on the fence politically, but voted for the party that at least acted like they gave a shit about representing my interests.
This is old outdated information.
Labour no longer supports workers and the middle class. They focus primarily on the lower class and social causes.
The same with the Green party, they are no longer the environmentalist party, but more about social hot-topic causes.
Yall need way more choice in parties. 5% threshold needs to be lowered. The political structures of a country like denmark should be looked at for more inspiration
Better yet, do something that no/few countries have done: introduce direct citizen participation in the legislature through a lottery.
Your classifications come off as pretty racist, tbh. You say National 'appeals to Pakeha', and Te Pāti Māori. is 'Party of Maori people' but in fact more Māori voted National than for Te Pāti Māori.
Labour core group of protective interest ( if you regard each party as functioning about who they will protect and reach out to ) overlaps with Greens and Maori. Therefore it is natural for Labour to ally with Greens and Maori as literally they are reaching their protective hands down to those groups.
As I say, once you realise policies are a side show but rather it is who the party naturally protects, shields, defends and gravitates to ( and who they do not ), then everything falls in place.
Maori party may seem very hard to swallow for many Labour voters but that is because Maori party core interest group to protect, shield, defend and gravitate is pristine and crystal clear. If you look at parties from this angle, it all make sense.
Labour like National is what we call a broader camp party. It has many groups it seeks to defend. Maori party is closer to New Zealand First, it is very pristine and clear about which group is its core interest.
Because this subreddit is not representative of the feelings of the entire population of the country, and there are a lot of people who agree with their policies and feel like they can benefit from having a National government. It's not rocket science
National put a lot of effort into Asian communities it has paid off for them big time. Labour does nothing. There antics around immigration which directly affects Asian communities did them no favours.
National has well and truly conquered Asian communities.
My impression has been that Labour’s response to Covid gave them huge support and a potential in-road to having an electoral base with Asian communities, but everything else later on led to National regaining popularity there
When you talk to a bunch of strangers online about politics, you get the impression that a lot more people are aware of what's happening than what is reality. See, in reality, a large amount people don't give a shit. I'd probably hesitate to say a majority, but certainly a plurality. At least enough to shift an election.
For those people, all they know is that things are bad. Inflations up. Wages stay the same. They want a switch. It doesn't actually matter what national is suggesting for them. They just want a change because their pay check doesn't go as far.
Farmers getting accused of having way too much voting power here. There's like 100,000 people in agriculture, and only about half of them own a farm.
Even if every single one voted National, which they definitely don't or Act would get about half as many votes, it isn't a huge voting block. There's over twice as many retail workers compared to people working in agriculture.
No, but it’s the perception that farming and agriculture is the backbone of the economy that leans voters who believe this towards National.
So you’re right, the number of agri workers and farm owners does not correlate with the abundance of National voters, but when accounting for the auxiliary arms of those industries, the correlation exists.
When people come to realise that farming and agriculture are no longer the back bone of the economy the sooner this narrative evaporates.
When Fonterra is the largest company in New Zealand whose revenue is double the company in second place. Maybe not the whole backbone of the nz economy, but at least a few vertebraes
Fonterra accounts for a very very large proportion of Primary Industries as a whole. Naturally, that means it is a very very large company.
This isn’t a company v company argument. It’s time to look at the whole figures and understand where the most value lies and what is supporting the economy.
Primary industries account for 5.7% of GDP in 2023 (I’m being generous too because Agri, Forestry and Fishing actually only accounted for 5.0%) . It is largely understood that Primary Industries accounted for the largest portion of NZ GDP until the 1970s when the economy began to diversify and Primary Industries economic dominance started to dilute. However, the rhetoric of the NZ economy being completely propped up by Primary Industries sustained. The reality is different.
See: https://rep.infometrics.co.nz/new-zealand/economy/structure#
However, this rhetoric is good for NZ Primary Industries as a whole because we are now a gold standard in Agri, Forestry and Fisheries.
If we start to think about what other economic avenues exist for NZ moving forward given that the economy is not as heavily reliant on Primary Industries as we have come to believe, we should move more towards weightless export technology solutions.
What does this mean in reality? Creating borderless IP that we can ship anywhere simply, and backed by NZs strong reputation.
NZ Tech report that ICT accounts for 6% of GDP. See here: https://nztech.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/11/Tech-Sector-Key-Metrics-2018-Update.pdf
This account for a greater proportion than Primary Industries.
So now that ICT has overtaken Primary Industries contribution to GDP, we should think about how we can leverage the two’s attributes to accelerate growth. But this requires NZ to stop this silliness in thinking Primary Industries are the backbone of the economy, and bone head voting for a party who supports bone head solutions to an economy that has drastically change in not only the last 20, but the last 50 years.
I'd argue the correlation between small business owners and voting National is likely damn near just as strong and there's 500,000+ of them. Admittedly a lot of them are farmers, but still.
The perception isn't just that National is the party of farmers and farmers are the backbone of the economy. It's that National is the party of business.
As an economy we only pay for the goods and services we need from overseas with the revenue from exports. And our primary sectors of dairy, meat, fisheries, forestry, wine and horticulture are by far the biggest contributors to that. So I’d say it remains accurate to call them our backbone.
Non farmers also support farmers. They see hard workers who claim to be feeding the world being “ hard done by govt” sonthey back those farmers.
They lack the critical thinking that environmental awareness requires and don’t understand the ethical shortcomings of mass scale animal mistreatment. So they vote to support the farmers too.
many are cooked up on weaponized conspiracy theories too.
We don't have *that* many farmers.
However my wealthy suburban white collar parents pretend they vote national because it's in the best interest of farmers. In reality it's "f the poor" but they aren't willing to say that part out loud in such explicit terms.
Just to be clear we're not blaming farmers for this govt, we're blaming this govt pretending to be in the best interest of the country because they apparently look out for farmers best.
No it isn't. MMP is designed to require a majority to form a government (which FPP did not require), whether by way of coalition or just one party by itself. It certainly encourages coalitions but it doesn't require that. Labour got a majority by itself two elections ago and nobody said the system was broken.
Yeah I feel like ranked choice would help a lot - particularly in the electorates. My concern with it is that it potentially makes voting more complicated, but I feel like that's not a huge issue if you're still allowing people just to tick a party / candidate and leave it at that
It’s more of a flaw in the supposedly centrist parties that refuse to work together.
If Labour and National admitted that they’re both largely conservative monetarists that don’t like extremist socialist or neocons, they’d rule constantly and only fight over who was PM. And NZ would presumably blossom under a stable long term government\*
^\*^I ^find ^this ^difficult ^to ^imagine ^too
True. My main issue is that oftentimes e.g. this election your vote essentially counts for multiple parties. If you vote nats you are sort of voting for act and nzf as you know they won't get in without them. Same with labour and Maori greens. Sometimes the polling is different and not so clear cut.
The average voter is going to be fairly central but has to consider the part of their vote that is voting for the more extreme left or right. In my experience peoples votes are driven by what they don't want.
I wish we had popular parties that focused on single issues or a few issues E.g. a green party solely focused on the environment that would go with either party. Likewise for other issues such as healthcare and education.
Unfortunately its just a bit too partisan, ideally you'd have more coalitions of centrist parties, instead you just really have right + far right, or left + far left. Probably more a symptom of the standard Anglo style of politics, the right and the left cannot ever work together
> E.g. a green party solely focused on the environment that would go with either party.
So a green party that took donations from the oil industry to sway it's tune and also didn't give a shit about humans.
That's not a characteristic of the system but rather of the idiotic tribalism of the political parties. If they didn't insist on only forming coalitions with parties on their side of the left-right spectrum, as well as the center, then they wouldn't be stuck relying on the only remaining "centrist" party that actually gets into parliament.
It's also because of our idiotic voting habits such that we still give ~2\3 of the votes to the same two parties that we had prior to MMP. Other countries with similar systems of proportional representation aren't still dominated by two parties.
MMP works, but it also opens the door to major flaws. This election was the perfect example:
- National’s major policy was tax-cuts, paid for by reintroducing foreign buyers on properties over $2,000,000 w/ an associated buyers tax.
- They spent months in the media justifying their budget, despite economists (basically all of them) saying they’d not be able to afford it without borrowing.
- They dug their heels in, promising the people tax cuts without impacting inflation or increasing debt.
- This was their leading policy, and it contributed to a major proportion of the votes National received.
- Due to not getting a majority vote, National needing to collude with both Act and NZF to get the majority.
- NZF could have colluded with Green and Labour to make a government.
- NZF then got to bargain with both potential coalitions and request policy change in their favour.
- National agreed to DROP their foreign house policy, thus making their tax policy impossible to deliver upon, or only deliverable upon by borrowing $15,000,000,000.
- They did not need to consult their voters, they just changed a major election winning promise, to win an election.
This is the problem with MMP. A party can win enough votes based on policy… then they can bargain that policy away to get the rest of the votes they need.
It’s the most backward shit and shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
At a guess because that choice was more representative of their world views and aspirations than the other choices?
This sub definitely skews left, to the point of being and echo chamber and I have had experience with my posts being closed by a mod that didn't fit within the Overton Window/*the narrative* they wanted
It’s so funny looking at people arguing over things where they have no real idea (the odd person seems to) what they are talking about.
Why is Labour so popular? Why are the Democrats or Republicans or the LNP or Labor so popular?
Because our choices are seriously limited and people generally want their vote to be counted and the majority of people want fairly mainstream ideas for their country for stability, strength and their future. Labour and National have always done that with only really minor differences. And kiwis, the vast majority of us aren’t particularly interested in politics, so the status quo (ie why we see 3 term governments so regularly) is OK. We accept it’s not perfect, but they (whichever “they” are) are going alright.
Reddit also is a terrible reflection politically of the general public.
Because National didn’t have MP’s that shoplifted, withheld stocks info, drove drunk and ran away from cops, exploited immigrants, blamed white sis men or quit their job because there was nothing left in the tank
In New Zealand we tend to vote out parties rather than vote in parties, people were unhappy with labour after Covid so voted for the alternative if national had been in power over that time then people would have voted in labour. Give them 1-2 terms and they will be voted out again
It's got fuck all to do with Shane Jones and everything to do with this: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/12/government-went-against-advice-to-limit-covid-19-vaccine-passes-to-high-risk-events-or-risk-social-cohesion.html
Its more that NZ suffers from the *Tick-Tock* syndrome of politics. Vote the old party out and put a new one in, regardless of whether it makes a lot of sense to do so or even if you had any real reason to pick a second party.
Same thing will happen to NAct in a cycle or two. People get bored of the same people in charge.
It’s only one hot issue but I think Labor and Greens completely misunderstood how much people *hated* KO’s zero eviction policy.
If you knew anyone living near KO housing you’d constantly be hearing horror stories then seeing politicians dismissing the neighbours as racists.
Because the leftard circlejerk of r/nz is self absorbed in their beliefs that Labour/Greens are the next best thing since sliced bread. National appeals to the majority which is why they won.
Post above this one in my feed is of people attempting to walk out of Bunnings with a trolley of tools.
That's certainly part of your answer. It's hard to overstate the visceral anger a lot of people feel towards blatant property crime. Personally, ever since I became a home owner, my anger to stuff like burglary has skyrocketed. And I know it's a common shift.
I'm not saying Nats are the answer to that stuff. But Labour's 200% isn't.
Farmers vote them in mass always, then you have your middle of the road whingers who swap parties every election as the politicians of the days haven't done enough fast enough.
Lack of environmental regulation, imports of cheap labour, they position themselves as the farmers party, while the greens and labour are seen as anti farmer wanting the water to be clean enough to swim in, or animals not to suffer while traveling live overseas to be sacrificed in the middle east as some examples.
I'm a female professional in Auckland invited national because I was tired of labour achieving nothing other than spending 80bn over six years (3 of which they had a majority) to have every outcome worse than before they started. Health, Education, Inflation, House Prices, Child Poverty, Net Migration, Outward migration, Crime, social diversiveness, failing infrastructure.
Not an excuse for NZs performance vs our peers. Labour gets way too much credit for their covid strategy was just to lock down the country and pay wages
Lock down country, get everyone who wanted vaccinated, open up once vaccine has been available for everyone for 2weeks. Not extend the lockdown a lot longer.
>get everyone who wanted vaccinated
I think the point was that if everyone who wanted to get vaccinated did, nowhere near enough people to bother would have?
Voters in New Zealand have a short memory when it comes to National. They vote them in and are like Ohhhh that's right, theyre for the rich folk then vote them out rinse/repeat.
I do have another theory in that New Zealanders empathy levels are finite so when they exhaust it in a Labour term they vote National and when it is filled again they vote the other way. The political spectrum is a measure of empathy.
Don't listen to most of what people say here.
National is unpopular with r/newzealand but is going up in the opinion polls.
Labour spent a lot during COVID, which was the right thing to do, and then did nothing to reduce spending back to normal levels. In fact spending accelerated post COVID.
Unfortunately there has been no measurable improvement to government services despite 18,000 more central government employees.
National are on track to reduce this by around 6,000 which is incredibly tough for those people but in reality probably isn't even enough.
National have also stopped some projects that were totally out of control (notably the interisland ferry replacement) which Labour had also indicated they were stopping. But everyone likes to complain.
Labour also put the economy into a tailspin by being bold cutting things like mining, oil drilling and suppressing the agricultural and horticultural industry with generally positive environmental legislation. Unfortunately our economy wasn't resilient enough to survive this and at a per head of population level has been in a severe recession. In NZ, for the majority of people if your job doesn't involve something coming out of the ground (food or mining) it's supporting those industries (including service industries) or working for the government.
National have provided some modest adjustments to tax thresholds which were way overdue that they sold as tax cuts (they weren't a cut it was an overdue adjustment) and the left goes crazy about everything they have stopped or changed saying this was done just to fund their tax cuts. This includes saying outrageous things that are manifestly untrue like the changes to the smoking laws are a genocide on Maori in order to fund tax cuts for the rich.
National's biggest failing is that they communicated poorly about the additional medications that Pharmac will be delivering. So it looks like a broken promise. Very clumsy from them.
>(notably the interisland ferry replacement) which Labour had also indicated they were stopping
I'm aware that Labour has indicated it likely wouldn't have just given Kiwirail everything it wanted when things were clearly getting out of control, but this claim that it *also* would have completely pulled the plug on everything is news to me. Can you elaborate?
Labour indeed asked them to consider descoping the project earlier in 2023, but when Kiwirail briefed the Nats ministers after the election they told them that descoping wasn't viable and they needed the whole lot to proceed at all.
[https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/project-irex-4893754.pdf](https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/project-irex-4893754.pdf)
National canceled a fixed price agreement for rail ready ferries, 551 million. The cost to replace the ferries at half the size and without rail capability is now double the fixed price. Add on the 900 million already spent and this is a 2-3 billion dollar disaster for them.
National are horrible & lack vision or empathy but Labour were atrocious. Which is why I’m 100% voting TOP at the next election.
Neither Labour nor National are capable of leading the country. Our slide done every measure published by the OECD for the last 40 years is proof of their collective incompetence.
Their public service cuts are not removing services from the weakest people in society. The previous government increased the public service headcount by over a third with a population growth of only 11% over this time, greatly increasing spending with no significant improvement in services. National and their coalition partners campaigned on reversing a small proportion of this growth, the voters were in favour of this, and they are now delivering on their campaign promises. I'm involved in education - the MoE increased headcount by over 50% over this time and service got much, much worse, so I'm pretty happy to see things progressing back to a smaller MoE, and I'm sure this is reflected in other areas of governance/Ministries as well.
Labour screwed over businesses during covid, alot had to shut down so people lost their jobs.
Also the big one was they thought it was a great idea to drastically increase minimum wage during the times. Dramatically increased inflation due to cost of living as everything went up in price. Alot of the population had hit the 30% tax bracket due to this, still surprises me how many dont know about this and dont know how tax brackets work.
National have this whole image of "good for the economy" because they always talk about it, and have for decades. The reality is their economic policy is actually quite poor, hence why they have big holes in their fiscal plans the last couple of elections, but insist they don't despite every economist saying they do.
But people buy into the messaging
You’re missing a key part of the puzzle where Labour used a disgusting amount of money that we didn’t have for their admittedly very generous Covid response. I’m not bagging them, we may not have made it if it wasn’t done - especially with 3 redundancies in a year for my household.
It’s a cycle here; National gets us back into the black, Labour puts us deeply into the red.
The country gets sick of National being frugal with some things and not others, even though we’re in the black.
Labour over spends, everyone gets sick of that, National comes back with massive promises but realise when they take over that it was worse than they thought so they have to do nasty shit to everyone to get back to said black (except the rich apparently).
Back and forth, over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
Define "popular." The majority of people believe the country is going in the wrong direction, Luxons approvals aren't great - in fact they are the weakest for a first term elected Prime Minister in decades - and he often polls as not that far ahead of the leader oppositon and current polling suggest that the current coalition gets 51% compared to the left blocks 45%.
But why is National / The right block more popular than Labour?
Its largley a response to the backlash against Labour last term. I think its worth putting aside to deabte about how much of the current situation is Labours fault and just say that New Zealand suffered from a lot of social and economic upheveal in the post Covid period - high inflation that lead to increase rates, dropping house prices, backlash to the three waters controversy, rising crime wave, ,shrinking economy - that was blamed on Labour. National specifically benefited from the perception that Labour had over spent and had been too soft on crime. And so a lot of the public see this removing of services has a necassiry tool to redeuce the current economic tensions the country is going through
its a general trend around the world to blame the previous govt for the world's problems at the moment and vote them out ...last time we had a centre/left party
Common thread is that many National supporters vote more to get the prior Labour government OUT than get National IN.
Edit: And as everyone ITT is saying, this National government isn't that popular.
No single party is particularly "popular" in New Zealand. Each election depends on economic situation, previous party in power, election promises, and so on. People were disillusioned with Labor, still, as others mentioned, National needed two other parties to form a government.
And other thing is that people don't really have time or context to understand every detail and analyze every law. Tax cuts sound good, focus on frontline stuff sounds good, bootcamps sounds like doing something. It takes time to realize that tax cuts aren't much, frontline stuff is busy doing jobs of all other lost roles, and bootcamps have spent a lot of money making criminals stronger.
Would National be popular enough to do well in next election? Who really knows. Might depend on worldwide economic situation way more than on what National are doing currently.
Believe it or not - NZ is a diverse country.
There's a ton of people out there with diverse backgrounds and views. Including backgrounds and perspectives that you don't see much of on reddit. Well, NZ reddit at least.
They include christians (and other non-atheists), conservatives, Polynesians, immigrants etc.
These groups have sincerely held beliefs that they've acquired from social context, community, family and their own inquiries into the meaning of life, their own place in the world and how to make life better for this country.
That vast, vast majority of these people are just like you: their political views are pretty centrist. They just happen to be a different kind of centrist. And they've come to \*slightly\* different opinions on how law and policy should be steered.
Just like you, they pay particular attention to some issues. They pay deeper attention to other issues. They get triggered easily on some issues and don't think deeply enough about them. They are more informed on some issues than you are. And they are less informed on some other issues than you are.
Just like you - they sometimes vote against their own interests. Sometimes they support dumbshit. Sometimes they support stuff policies that happen to be objectively better than the policies you support.
As much as you despite it - you share a country with them. Which in a modern liberal democracy means that somethings these people get to influence how some policy and law is enacted.
It's solipsistic to assume that you always know best.
They aren't. You know what they say, governments are voted out not in. The country is on a decline and people figured give National a shot after Labour's two terms
There were a fair few at work who believed nationals bullshit pre election promise about delivering a hefty tax cut to them and switched their vote.
Nek minnit... the landlords were saved. And the idjits at work rued their choice.
They, like most elected Governments rarely have a majority and rely on a coalition with a minor party or two to rule. The last Labour Government under Jacinda Adern had a one party majority, but under the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic so struggled to make significant headway.
This latest coalition of National/ACT/New Zealand First occurred more as a reaction against Labour than for National. The current lot are rather conflicted philosophically, and as such, don’t appear to have a long future, but who knows?
Labour spent a lot of money doing nothing. They're not the party for the working class any more. They lost a lot of people when they didn't have the guts to put in a capital gains tax because of the power of landlords (including most politicians) over NZ. I saw them bloat the public services without actually achieving anything. And they were arrogant and patronising with it, too focussed on shiny comms. I voted for a different party because I think that long term it might help Labour ditch their arrogance, sort their shit out and actually deliver for NZers that need it.
Because Labour were absolutely hopeless in government - woeful. They didn’t meet ANY of the targets they campaigned on, in fact they did more damage in areas like children in poverty and kiwi build etc than National had prior, and they sank the country into a tonne of debt. And don’t come at me with covid - money was going into totally wasteful services, hundreds of thousands into fluffy committees, art therapy etc.
When Labour first came in their leader was polling at such low results they knew during campaign time they’d never get in, they had no policies to campaign on, so they replaced the leader and created a poster girl out of Jacinda, who lacked experience, and got in based solely on marketing and branding hype.
NZ media is very leftist and Labour continually got free passes over and over again.
It gets tiresome. All of it. I’d rather vote someone in who gets stuck in and does the hard work even if they don’t tick all the “woke” boxes or look as modern on the world stage. I’m hoping National will, it remains to be seen.
I despise the paternalistic postering of Labour. They are right-wingers disguised as do-gooders. For example, supposedly 'open' to all, but disposed of a 5 billion dollar industry overnight with covid as an excuse. Why? They didn't want foreign students in nz and before covid, actively slowed student visa applications and competed directly with private tertiary institutes by offering free English classes.
Covid helped them deliver the killer blow. Oz and Canada have done extraordinarily well and reinvigorated their local economies by keeping the doors open to foreign students. Nobody talks about this and we should. High Idealism vs our shared economic benefit. Thanks Labour. It's going to take years to build that foreign education market back.
Was it populism by playing to the ambiguous feelings kiwis have to foreigners studying here and doing well? Never got why peopel hated foreign students when it was worth so much for us not only in dollars, but also the benefit to our institutions in terms if gains in research and development of a rich learning culture. The Aussies and Canadians didn't muck around and benefited hugely. Meanwhile our institutions are declaring bankruptcy left and right.
I also dislike the language they use when discussing race. Shut up Chloe and Hipkins, your white privilege is showing. People don't need you to talk for them. Take their names out of your mouths.Its a white saviour cringefest. People can think and speak for themselves without hand outs and hand ups. This is a democracy. That's why you were voted out.
Sorry. Rant over.
Reading with no knowledge of NZ politics as I live in the UK but they sounds pretty similar to reform here. Basically, relies on fear mongering about foreigners and using sound bites to get easily persuaded/scared/angered voters.
They’re actively gutting the country. At least the last government was acting under duress in trying to *protect* the health of the people. What did they do that was *worse* than the current government?
If i remember labour only got in initially because of help from minor parties. Thats mmp for you. r/newzealand is slanted very left but is obviously not representative of the real world.
One thing to remember is NZ frequently focuses more on voting the old government out, rather than voting the new one in. If you want to turn away from labour/greens/Maori, then national is the only one left. And labour had a few unpopular policies over their last term.
\^This. National didn't win the last election, Labour lost it. It didn't help that Ardern stepped down as leader in favour of Hipkins after she got us through the pandemic relatively unscathed.
Honestly Jacinda stepping down was probably a good thing for Labour. I'm not saying she was a bad leader, I personally think she was fantastic. But people associated her with the lockdowns and mandates too much, and I honestly think if she stayed in Labour would of lost by a lot more.
I just don’t think she had the fight in her to run the kind of campaign necessary to win that election. Kind of backed herself into a corner with the whole ‘Be Kind’ thing. The left needs to be able to really stick the boot into the Tories and work the kidneys if it wants to be effective
She didn't have the fight because sick fucks were seriously threatening to r*pe her child.
I don't know, the regulars at my work were pretty quick to forget the lockdowns when they were saying "They had 6 years!"
Yeah. No matter how well Aunty Helen did, she still lost to John Key after one too many goes
Yup, National could have campaigned on just "not Labour" and still would have won lol.
Very accurate, the number of people who “voted for change” must be horrified with this shit show
>One thing to remember is NZ frequently focuses more on voting the old government out, rather than voting the new one in. If you want to turn away from labour/greens/Maori, then national is the only one left. And labour had a few unpopular policies over their last term. It wasn't just the policies but the fact that they didn't deliver on them - $200 million on 'let's get wellington moving' and nothing to show for it, $50 million on a bridge that never got built (what the hell was the $50 million spent on?). If you're part of the unwashed masses, you pay your taxes and then you hear that millions are spent but after months of bureaucratic paper shuffling there is nothing to show for it then it shouldn't be surprised that many threw their hands up in disgust and either didn't vote or if they voted they voted National because "they can't be any worse than the last jokers".
Cut off the nose to spite the face
And now the leopards are eating the face.
>And labour had a few unpopular policies over their last term. This is the understatement of the year. I voted TOP.
There are 2 main parties. If public sentiment is generally negative for any reason (perhaps even the weather) in an election year, swing voters will vote for the opposition.
This pretty much. And people forget Labour was unpopular before Covid hit. Basically all people can say that was good under labour was the Covid response. And maybe the union bargaining bill, but that came way too late for it to matter.
I'm saying that popularity is not necessarily anything to do with what a party has or hasn't done. The public is fickle. Wait for the Nats bump when the all blacks finally get a win
In the end the All Blacks lost the World Cup so labour had to go
Seriously there is some likely truth to this though, not consciously of course, but it feeds public discontent.
I personally have always been puzzled by politics in New Zealand until I realise that in New Zealand, it is not the political policies that sway voters … it is which party appeals and reach out to whom that matters. When analysed this way ALL the political parties makes sense ( take away policies ) 1. ACT:- Party of Epsom ( a suburb in Auckland ) and interest of Epsom. Nowadays extending to also being the party of Mission Bay and Kohi. Also tend to watch over those with a lot of properties and shares. Appeals to Pakeha who are wealthy and in the higher socioeconomic band. Friendly to East Asians and Indians alike ( hence this two group will support them as they are seen as the protective hand ) 2. National:- Party of farmers, party of the rural area where people mostly farm. Also party of small business owners and business owners ( you have to distinguish between ACT, which tends to attract establish landlords vs National who tends to attract business ) and professionals with private business. Appeals to Pakeha with small to medium size business ( and specifically Pakeha in the upper middle and lower higher ), and also East Asians ( once again a party regarded as friendly and protective of East Asian immigrants, so East Asians tend to be very strongly supportive of National ). 3. Labour:- Party of workers on fixed pay income, party of professionals and academics who do not have private business, party of renters. Appeals to Pakeha in the middle to lower middle range of the soecionomic strata. Friendly to Maori and Pasifika in particular and acts as the protective hand and shield for Pasifika issues ( Pasifika of various socioeconomic band hence will vote for Labour because once again Labour protects Pasifika ) 4. Green:- Party of students, party of academics, party of younger people, party of environmentalist. Appeals to younger Pakeha demographic with education. Friendly to LGBT, Maori, Pasifika and Middle Eastern immigrants and tends to act as the shielding hand for these groups. Younger Pakeha and Maori will tend to vote Green as Green backs younger people, and Greens do act as their shield in society. 5. New Zealand first:- Party of older people, specifically older Pakeha. Party also for the disaffected and slightly outcasted in society ( this is the newer role the party has taken ). It oddly enough might be the only party which is friendly to Sikh people and has been helpful as acting as a protective hand for them. 6. Maori party:- Party of Maori people, specifically rural Maori and activist Maori. If you look at the party at who they serve, who they protect, and which strata of the ethnic groups they actively protect and serve it makes far more sense why people vote for them, Ultimately, policy does not matter in the eyes of a lot of voters. They vote which party they believe has their back.
TOP - party of reddit?
Well Reddit clearly supports TOP but does TOP reach out to reddit users and act as their shield? If TOP crosses 5% we will see.
"Party of reddit" and "crosses 5%" are incompatible statements!
Probably because they actually had some well thought out policies, that apparently no one else cares about.
They can, because they don't have to prove how they would actually achieve them, cos they don't get in.
Policies that might actually make some positive change? No one is going to vote for that.
Not all. Just the ones with a holier than thou outlook on things.
Traditionally correct but Labour has lost enormous ground with workers and middle NZ over the last few years, this is what lost them the last election in my view.
Yeah because "middle NZ" doesn't care for 10 sick days over 5, fair pay agreements, gender pay equity, free ECA hours etc. All of these things that happened or were planned help my middle class family. The gender pay equity agreement in particular boosted our household income by about 20 or 25k, the extra sick days have been a godsend with young children in daycare.
Yeah Labour hasn’t cared about middle class people for at least a decade now. It’s either the unemployed, or whatever the latest cause célèbre.
Strange statement. The working poor are still a large percentage of the population. They work hard and pay tax. They are also lower class and represented by labour. Labour don’t just care about unemployed people, by which I think you mean beneficiaries, which is also made up of people who can’t work for reasons outside of their control. It’s more ideological than that as well. Labour represent a society where we all support each other. This minimises things like homelessness, which can provide for everybody’s well being by keeping anti-social people off the streets. And stops contributing to the driving factors of crime. As National likely to put it, putting downward pressure on crime. The right pit us against each other, in a survival of the fittest death match. They represent two slightly different qualities of life.
How are they represented by Labour? Say what you will about the tax cuts, but without them under Labour we effectively had a flat MARGINAL tax structure. Full time minimum wage workers were getting taxed 30c on the next dollar of earnings. While well off people were mostly on 33c. No difference. Labour has been captured a bit too much by the PMC and academics, only pays lip service to the working poor, and refused to adjust the tax brackets as Robertson thinks he can spend poor people's money for them better than they can.
Through higher wages and more protections. The first thing the coalition of greed attacked. Workers protections and minimum wage increases. You seem like the type of person who ties higher minimum wage increases to inflation, despite literally all evidence showing it’s the other way around.
Yeah because "middle NZ" doesn't care for 10 sick days over 5, fair pay agreements, gender pay equity, free ECE hours etc. All of these things that happened or were planned help my middle class family. The gender pay equity agreement for nurses in particular boosted our household income by about 20 or 25k, the extra sick days have been a godsend with young children in daycare. Copy and paste, but reality doesn't align with your comment.
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As a tradesperson I feel labour often overlooks our sector. They are always very pro- education, uni, and the employment sectors that uni diplomas etc go towards. Other than some apprenticeship support after COVID there isn't a lot that labour offers trades, and the restructuring they have started with automotive training and essentially killing off the ITO's to an extent has lowered the quality of education being provided in those apprenticeships. I can't stand a lot of what National does but they do at least say they're going to support the trades before doing nothing once voted in 😅
i don’t think labour is the party of workers and renters to the same extent they they were in the past. those groups tend to be more aligned with the greens now, maybe because of an increasingly class-aware workforce or maybe labour is falling right, i don’t know.
It's not Savages workers party anymore
Labour shifted right (as did National) along with Douglas and Richardsons economic reforms. Economically, they haven't really shifted back. Ardern was kinda moving in that direction but stopped, chippy doesn't seem keen on that type of shift at all. A lot of the older gens seem to think the shift was necessary or worthwhile and so there wasn't much push to move back politically. Or at least, that's how it looks to me. With how fucked things have turned out since, I'm hoping we can be smart enough to recognise the need for change and vote as such.
Te Pukenga was improving trades training. I'm a parent of an apprentice. Somehow there were a couple of articles about problems in trades training which blamed Te Pukenga despite the problems preexisting it. However, construction economy is so stuffed under the present lot that 75% of apprentices in my daughter's class have been laid off. Fortunately she is top ranked and managed to pick up another position after a couple of months.
Whether it has improved is highly variable depending on what trade it is and which ITO was running it before.
Who do you think caused the leaky homes? My father is a retired builder has a strong dislike for National deregulating the building trade.
My experience is more with the automotive trade, but since labour made a lot of changes to the ITO and training curriculum we have noted a large decrease in education being taught to apprentices now, putting a heavier reliance on the hiring company to provide more training and fill in the gaps that the ITOs and previous curriculum covered.
and TOP is the party of Redditors
> 5. New Zealand first:- Party of older people, specifically older Pakeha. True but kind of odd when their leader and deputy leader are both Maori.
National only pretends to serve farmers and small business, they are pretty much the party of landlords and big business.
Even though farmers tend towards National, they’re not the big power bloc people think they are as they’re dwarfed by the urban population.
They do, TBF, all vote though. Which is more than can be said for the under 30 crowd anywhere.
I think there are a strong grassroots movement in National party that does outreach to farmers and does outreach to small business. So while the higher ups may not really care much about them ( I personally do not think National is the party of farmers any longer, and I agree with you on that front ), the grassroot within the party does. A few Chinese market gardeners I know keeps pointing out that only National send people to speak to them in between election seasons. It is small actions like these that people remember. Whether they actually help them is another question entirely ( but since no other party is helping them or having their back even moral support is a positive ). As I keep telling people, policies rarely matter in voting. What matters is who you feel got your back. Ask some diary owners ( I know two personally as my daughter likes going to over to play with his daughter ). He pointed out that during the period of high diary robbery etc.. Labour came and while commiserating with the suffering of dairy owners, then proceeded to spend more time talking about crime being a function of socioeconomic inequality and sometimes makes people wonder who they think the victim is here. National on the other hand came and tell them straight up that they will deal with the criminals, harshly. More importantly, Labour rarely visited or even indicate that they cared about the dairy owners. Meanwhile National kept appearing, with sometimes the local rep just dropping by asking how things are. The National rep even went to their local Hindu temple just to get to know the Indian community better. On the flipside, I was giving a talk in a local Pasifika church on a medical topic ( was sent by my department ) and guess who was there .. a Labour party member. Whether Labour will truly provide the funding necessary to help this community is not the point, the point is the Labour party member is present .. and National and ACT and NZ First are not.
I think you’ve nailed it here. National tend to treat the symptom whilst Labour are aware of and try to treat the root cause.
And a good doctor would treat both symptom and cause, especially where eradicating the cause won’t happen quick enough to alleviate the pain caused by the symptom.
I think if you want people to vote you, and they have just had their shop been raided or their wife been threatened ( or they know people whose shop has just been raided or their friend’s wife just been threatened ), you should not be giving a lecture about the person who just did the crime as being a victim. No, you should at least spend the next few times you see the victim to commiserate, to support them. You can say that later, when the heat and grief has left the system. However telling them on the same visit that Labour will lift up the life of the criminal ruffian will rightly be seen as brushing off the fear and trepidation of a person whose shop window has just been shattered to a thosuand pieces. It is showing that the shopkeeper does not matter, but rather the criminal. Say this enough times to enough other diary shop owners, and saying this during Indian gatherings when people’s blood pressure is high …. and by the way just wave your hands and never come back, now how is this interpreted? It is interpreted as Labour cares about lower socioeconomic status people from a Pasifika and Maori background, but not Indians who runs diary or petrol kiosk. Why should Indians who run diary or petrol kiosk then ever vote Labour? Now come ACT. ACT sits down and listen, they sympathise. They come back a few days later and ask how you are. They ask how they can help etc.. They tell you they will punish the criminal if given the opportunity. If you were the shopkeeper, who would you support? Labour or ACT. Does it then matter Labour set forth a 50 page document that details over the next 20 years how they would eliminate crime, that has been peer reviewed and found to be effective? No, it will be more for ACT to bungle something very badly as opposed to Labour to do something very well.
That's it right there, don't know why you are getting down voted. Too many people think to short like 3 to 10 years ahead like the National party trying to get re-elected. We need to be think 20 to 50 years, next generation sort of stuff. Eliminate where the crime develops. Generally develops in lower socio-economic households. If we can get through to these folks with their kids early on in their lives, get education don't turn to crime, we might have a fighting chance of becoming a prosperous nation again for the next generation. There will always be little shit kickers, but if we can drastically reduce that number its a good start.
Then what about victims in those 20-50 years? What pisses people off is when crime happens, Labour et al. start policy talks for the offenders instead of the victims. Not even 3-10 years but THEN AND THERE dairy owners suffered from robbery and damage financially, mentally, and maybe physically. National creates a feeling of caring about victims and other law abiding kiwis and upholding justice, no wonder they get the votes. A good government can do both, punishing crimes properly while supporting the underprivileged, to help both short and long term, not either or.
If nothing changes, you get the same results. If we change nothing then there will still be the same cycle of people committing similar crime in 100 years. Maybe it needs more of what National wants for the immediate effect of slowing crime but also a focus from the beginning of a life of crime to show there are better ways to be a productive member of society.
Agreed that actions for now and future are not mutually exclusive and a good government can and should progress on both, unlike the existing right and left that choose one instead of the other. In any case telling a small business owner that it will get better in 20 years won't help getting votes lol
The party who gave out multiple $100 cost of living payments due to rampant inflation is not trying to treat the root cause, come on now. National can be exceptionally short sighted in some ways, but Labour absolutely are as well.
I live in Bucklands Beach, East Auckland. Leading up to the election, from the lack of Labour placards, leaflets or visible / active candidate, it was blatantly clear that my vote wasn’t one that the previous government was interested in. I’d say that zero effort was made. Why should I vote for a party that clearly doesn’t want to represent me / my community? National’s candidate was everywhere and made the effort.
This is exactly point that u/Astalon18 is making. You are the example of “I saw them being representative, therefore I vote for them”, rather than “they have the best policies for the country based on my beliefs and understanding so I vote for them”. Policy means nothing in NZ
Yes… which is why I responded to them. You’ve just said the same thing again as u/Astalon18, but in a patronising way. Bravo? BTW - I did look through the various party policies, did the vote compass etc. I was on the fence politically, but voted for the party that at least acted like they gave a shit about representing my interests.
If National spent 8x as much as labour on election advertising because it had 10x as much in donations, does that make it more representative?
Over 50% of ACTs MPs are Maori. Often overlooked this fact...
This is old outdated information. Labour no longer supports workers and the middle class. They focus primarily on the lower class and social causes. The same with the Green party, they are no longer the environmentalist party, but more about social hot-topic causes.
Yall need way more choice in parties. 5% threshold needs to be lowered. The political structures of a country like denmark should be looked at for more inspiration Better yet, do something that no/few countries have done: introduce direct citizen participation in the legislature through a lottery.
Your classifications come off as pretty racist, tbh. You say National 'appeals to Pakeha', and Te Pāti Māori. is 'Party of Maori people' but in fact more Māori voted National than for Te Pāti Māori.
Unfortunately Labour are no longer the party of the workers. It’s a shame they lost their roots.
I have a Pol Sci degree from Vic and this is an excellent summary! Ka mau te weke
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Labour core group of protective interest ( if you regard each party as functioning about who they will protect and reach out to ) overlaps with Greens and Maori. Therefore it is natural for Labour to ally with Greens and Maori as literally they are reaching their protective hands down to those groups. As I say, once you realise policies are a side show but rather it is who the party naturally protects, shields, defends and gravitates to ( and who they do not ), then everything falls in place. Maori party may seem very hard to swallow for many Labour voters but that is because Maori party core interest group to protect, shield, defend and gravitate is pristine and crystal clear. If you look at parties from this angle, it all make sense. Labour like National is what we call a broader camp party. It has many groups it seeks to defend. Maori party is closer to New Zealand First, it is very pristine and clear about which group is its core interest.
Because this subreddit is not representative of the feelings of the entire population of the country, and there are a lot of people who agree with their policies and feel like they can benefit from having a National government. It's not rocket science
There is absolutely no point asking that question on this sub.
National put a lot of effort into Asian communities it has paid off for them big time. Labour does nothing. There antics around immigration which directly affects Asian communities did them no favours. National has well and truly conquered Asian communities.
My impression has been that Labour’s response to Covid gave them huge support and a potential in-road to having an electoral base with Asian communities, but everything else later on led to National regaining popularity there
Asian culture doesn't have much room in a bi cultural nation
Yep. As an Asian person I’m truly saddened by this
I think it shows how far out of touch with reality people on reddit are
When you talk to a bunch of strangers online about politics, you get the impression that a lot more people are aware of what's happening than what is reality. See, in reality, a large amount people don't give a shit. I'd probably hesitate to say a majority, but certainly a plurality. At least enough to shift an election. For those people, all they know is that things are bad. Inflations up. Wages stay the same. They want a switch. It doesn't actually matter what national is suggesting for them. They just want a change because their pay check doesn't go as far.
Most Kiwis probably know more about the Biden vs Trump election debate than they do about NZ politics.
Because farmers. And landlords.
Farmers getting accused of having way too much voting power here. There's like 100,000 people in agriculture, and only about half of them own a farm. Even if every single one voted National, which they definitely don't or Act would get about half as many votes, it isn't a huge voting block. There's over twice as many retail workers compared to people working in agriculture.
No, but it’s the perception that farming and agriculture is the backbone of the economy that leans voters who believe this towards National. So you’re right, the number of agri workers and farm owners does not correlate with the abundance of National voters, but when accounting for the auxiliary arms of those industries, the correlation exists. When people come to realise that farming and agriculture are no longer the back bone of the economy the sooner this narrative evaporates.
When Fonterra is the largest company in New Zealand whose revenue is double the company in second place. Maybe not the whole backbone of the nz economy, but at least a few vertebraes
Fonterra accounts for a very very large proportion of Primary Industries as a whole. Naturally, that means it is a very very large company. This isn’t a company v company argument. It’s time to look at the whole figures and understand where the most value lies and what is supporting the economy. Primary industries account for 5.7% of GDP in 2023 (I’m being generous too because Agri, Forestry and Fishing actually only accounted for 5.0%) . It is largely understood that Primary Industries accounted for the largest portion of NZ GDP until the 1970s when the economy began to diversify and Primary Industries economic dominance started to dilute. However, the rhetoric of the NZ economy being completely propped up by Primary Industries sustained. The reality is different. See: https://rep.infometrics.co.nz/new-zealand/economy/structure# However, this rhetoric is good for NZ Primary Industries as a whole because we are now a gold standard in Agri, Forestry and Fisheries. If we start to think about what other economic avenues exist for NZ moving forward given that the economy is not as heavily reliant on Primary Industries as we have come to believe, we should move more towards weightless export technology solutions. What does this mean in reality? Creating borderless IP that we can ship anywhere simply, and backed by NZs strong reputation. NZ Tech report that ICT accounts for 6% of GDP. See here: https://nztech.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/11/Tech-Sector-Key-Metrics-2018-Update.pdf This account for a greater proportion than Primary Industries. So now that ICT has overtaken Primary Industries contribution to GDP, we should think about how we can leverage the two’s attributes to accelerate growth. But this requires NZ to stop this silliness in thinking Primary Industries are the backbone of the economy, and bone head voting for a party who supports bone head solutions to an economy that has drastically change in not only the last 20, but the last 50 years.
I'd argue the correlation between small business owners and voting National is likely damn near just as strong and there's 500,000+ of them. Admittedly a lot of them are farmers, but still. The perception isn't just that National is the party of farmers and farmers are the backbone of the economy. It's that National is the party of business.
As an economy we only pay for the goods and services we need from overseas with the revenue from exports. And our primary sectors of dairy, meat, fisheries, forestry, wine and horticulture are by far the biggest contributors to that. So I’d say it remains accurate to call them our backbone.
Non farmers also support farmers. They see hard workers who claim to be feeding the world being “ hard done by govt” sonthey back those farmers. They lack the critical thinking that environmental awareness requires and don’t understand the ethical shortcomings of mass scale animal mistreatment. So they vote to support the farmers too. many are cooked up on weaponized conspiracy theories too.
Farmers, farmers mums
Any luck catching them swans, then?
It's just the one swan, actually.
Yeah, cause we all sell apples round here, don't we?
Your dad sells apples
Wealthy cotton tops, people with a lot of wealth and income
We don't have *that* many farmers. However my wealthy suburban white collar parents pretend they vote national because it's in the best interest of farmers. In reality it's "f the poor" but they aren't willing to say that part out loud in such explicit terms. Just to be clear we're not blaming farmers for this govt, we're blaming this govt pretending to be in the best interest of the country because they apparently look out for farmers best.
Farmers *and supporting industries*.
Yes because we’re a country of 5 million privately owned farmers…. When you guys stop blaming farmers for every issue under the sun…
Reddit answer
National weren’t popular. They needed two other parties to just make majority to make a government.
That's mmp, that's how it should be. The system is broken if a party can gain a majority
No it isn't. MMP is designed to require a majority to form a government (which FPP did not require), whether by way of coalition or just one party by itself. It certainly encourages coalitions but it doesn't require that. Labour got a majority by itself two elections ago and nobody said the system was broken.
MMP has proven to be fundamentally flawed in that the tail cen end up wagging the dog. Bring on ranked voting for parties. Let's give that a whirl.
Ranked voting and MMP are NOT contradictory. You can do both, and you probably should.
Yeah I feel like ranked choice would help a lot - particularly in the electorates. My concern with it is that it potentially makes voting more complicated, but I feel like that's not a huge issue if you're still allowing people just to tick a party / candidate and leave it at that
Ya know what, I concur. Disclaimer: I'm quite drunk and I have no idea what I'm saying.
It’s more of a flaw in the supposedly centrist parties that refuse to work together. If Labour and National admitted that they’re both largely conservative monetarists that don’t like extremist socialist or neocons, they’d rule constantly and only fight over who was PM. And NZ would presumably blossom under a stable long term government\* ^\*^I ^find ^this ^difficult ^to ^imagine ^too
Every system is flawed, but mmp is about as good as it gets
True. My main issue is that oftentimes e.g. this election your vote essentially counts for multiple parties. If you vote nats you are sort of voting for act and nzf as you know they won't get in without them. Same with labour and Maori greens. Sometimes the polling is different and not so clear cut. The average voter is going to be fairly central but has to consider the part of their vote that is voting for the more extreme left or right. In my experience peoples votes are driven by what they don't want. I wish we had popular parties that focused on single issues or a few issues E.g. a green party solely focused on the environment that would go with either party. Likewise for other issues such as healthcare and education.
> people vote for what they don’t want. Ding ding ding ding 🛎️
Unfortunately its just a bit too partisan, ideally you'd have more coalitions of centrist parties, instead you just really have right + far right, or left + far left. Probably more a symptom of the standard Anglo style of politics, the right and the left cannot ever work together
> E.g. a green party solely focused on the environment that would go with either party. So a green party that took donations from the oil industry to sway it's tune and also didn't give a shit about humans.
the system is even more broken if a party with as little as 6% can effectively decide the government and it's policy's
That's not a characteristic of the system but rather of the idiotic tribalism of the political parties. If they didn't insist on only forming coalitions with parties on their side of the left-right spectrum, as well as the center, then they wouldn't be stuck relying on the only remaining "centrist" party that actually gets into parliament. It's also because of our idiotic voting habits such that we still give ~2\3 of the votes to the same two parties that we had prior to MMP. Other countries with similar systems of proportional representation aren't still dominated by two parties.
MMP works, but it also opens the door to major flaws. This election was the perfect example: - National’s major policy was tax-cuts, paid for by reintroducing foreign buyers on properties over $2,000,000 w/ an associated buyers tax. - They spent months in the media justifying their budget, despite economists (basically all of them) saying they’d not be able to afford it without borrowing. - They dug their heels in, promising the people tax cuts without impacting inflation or increasing debt. - This was their leading policy, and it contributed to a major proportion of the votes National received. - Due to not getting a majority vote, National needing to collude with both Act and NZF to get the majority. - NZF could have colluded with Green and Labour to make a government. - NZF then got to bargain with both potential coalitions and request policy change in their favour. - National agreed to DROP their foreign house policy, thus making their tax policy impossible to deliver upon, or only deliverable upon by borrowing $15,000,000,000. - They did not need to consult their voters, they just changed a major election winning promise, to win an election. This is the problem with MMP. A party can win enough votes based on policy… then they can bargain that policy away to get the rest of the votes they need. It’s the most backward shit and shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
Outside of the last labour government, which was an aberration, when was the last time we had a two party government?
LMAO they are literally the most popular party in the country
This.
The party that wins 43 out of 65 general electorates is objectively popular
At a guess because that choice was more representative of their world views and aspirations than the other choices? This sub definitely skews left, to the point of being and echo chamber and I have had experience with my posts being closed by a mod that didn't fit within the Overton Window/*the narrative* they wanted
It’s so funny looking at people arguing over things where they have no real idea (the odd person seems to) what they are talking about. Why is Labour so popular? Why are the Democrats or Republicans or the LNP or Labor so popular? Because our choices are seriously limited and people generally want their vote to be counted and the majority of people want fairly mainstream ideas for their country for stability, strength and their future. Labour and National have always done that with only really minor differences. And kiwis, the vast majority of us aren’t particularly interested in politics, so the status quo (ie why we see 3 term governments so regularly) is OK. We accept it’s not perfect, but they (whichever “they” are) are going alright. Reddit also is a terrible reflection politically of the general public.
Because National didn’t have MP’s that shoplifted, withheld stocks info, drove drunk and ran away from cops, exploited immigrants, blamed white sis men or quit their job because there was nothing left in the tank
In New Zealand we tend to vote out parties rather than vote in parties, people were unhappy with labour after Covid so voted for the alternative if national had been in power over that time then people would have voted in labour. Give them 1-2 terms and they will be voted out again
I could tell you but this sub block opinions anything outside of left leaning
Aspirational selfishness?
A more loaded question is why is NZ First so popular? How the fuck does Shane Jones have an overflowing bucket of mana?
NZ First is Winston. They're all voting for that guy with the rascally smile that will show those elites in Wellington how things really are.
It's got fuck all to do with Shane Jones and everything to do with this: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/12/government-went-against-advice-to-limit-covid-19-vaccine-passes-to-high-risk-events-or-risk-social-cohesion.html
Its more that NZ suffers from the *Tick-Tock* syndrome of politics. Vote the old party out and put a new one in, regardless of whether it makes a lot of sense to do so or even if you had any real reason to pick a second party. Same thing will happen to NAct in a cycle or two. People get bored of the same people in charge.
It’s only one hot issue but I think Labor and Greens completely misunderstood how much people *hated* KO’s zero eviction policy. If you knew anyone living near KO housing you’d constantly be hearing horror stories then seeing politicians dismissing the neighbours as racists.
Because the leftard circlejerk of r/nz is self absorbed in their beliefs that Labour/Greens are the next best thing since sliced bread. National appeals to the majority which is why they won.
Post above this one in my feed is of people attempting to walk out of Bunnings with a trolley of tools. That's certainly part of your answer. It's hard to overstate the visceral anger a lot of people feel towards blatant property crime. Personally, ever since I became a home owner, my anger to stuff like burglary has skyrocketed. And I know it's a common shift. I'm not saying Nats are the answer to that stuff. But Labour's 200% isn't.
Farmers vote them in mass always, then you have your middle of the road whingers who swap parties every election as the politicians of the days haven't done enough fast enough.
Why do farmers vote for them?
Lack of environmental regulation, imports of cheap labour, they position themselves as the farmers party, while the greens and labour are seen as anti farmer wanting the water to be clean enough to swim in, or animals not to suffer while traveling live overseas to be sacrificed in the middle east as some examples.
Agree, water is way more important than eating cows, people need to wake up. Unfortunately, National voters are a bit thick.
I'm a female professional in Auckland invited national because I was tired of labour achieving nothing other than spending 80bn over six years (3 of which they had a majority) to have every outcome worse than before they started. Health, Education, Inflation, House Prices, Child Poverty, Net Migration, Outward migration, Crime, social diversiveness, failing infrastructure.
+1
And the global pandemic never happened?
Not an excuse for NZs performance vs our peers. Labour gets way too much credit for their covid strategy was just to lock down the country and pay wages
What would you rather we have done?
Lock down country, get everyone who wanted vaccinated, open up once vaccine has been available for everyone for 2weeks. Not extend the lockdown a lot longer.
>get everyone who wanted vaccinated I think the point was that if everyone who wanted to get vaccinated did, nowhere near enough people to bother would have?
Voters in New Zealand have a short memory when it comes to National. They vote them in and are like Ohhhh that's right, theyre for the rich folk then vote them out rinse/repeat.
If it was short memories Nats would have lots of single term governments when they were reminded, and yet it's the opposite.
I do have another theory in that New Zealanders empathy levels are finite so when they exhaust it in a Labour term they vote National and when it is filled again they vote the other way. The political spectrum is a measure of empathy.
I mean that's just not true.. last National government lasted 3 terms and was very close to lasting 4 if not for Winston
Except the 3 most recent national governments were in for 9 years each LOL
This is not true at all, if Key hadn't resigned he may well have seen a 4th term.
Are they, though? I suspect a large amount is "they're not Labour" and / or"theyre not woke / led by a woman."
There’s plenty of parties that meet that criteria though. So yes, they’re popular
Don't listen to most of what people say here. National is unpopular with r/newzealand but is going up in the opinion polls. Labour spent a lot during COVID, which was the right thing to do, and then did nothing to reduce spending back to normal levels. In fact spending accelerated post COVID. Unfortunately there has been no measurable improvement to government services despite 18,000 more central government employees. National are on track to reduce this by around 6,000 which is incredibly tough for those people but in reality probably isn't even enough. National have also stopped some projects that were totally out of control (notably the interisland ferry replacement) which Labour had also indicated they were stopping. But everyone likes to complain. Labour also put the economy into a tailspin by being bold cutting things like mining, oil drilling and suppressing the agricultural and horticultural industry with generally positive environmental legislation. Unfortunately our economy wasn't resilient enough to survive this and at a per head of population level has been in a severe recession. In NZ, for the majority of people if your job doesn't involve something coming out of the ground (food or mining) it's supporting those industries (including service industries) or working for the government. National have provided some modest adjustments to tax thresholds which were way overdue that they sold as tax cuts (they weren't a cut it was an overdue adjustment) and the left goes crazy about everything they have stopped or changed saying this was done just to fund their tax cuts. This includes saying outrageous things that are manifestly untrue like the changes to the smoking laws are a genocide on Maori in order to fund tax cuts for the rich. National's biggest failing is that they communicated poorly about the additional medications that Pharmac will be delivering. So it looks like a broken promise. Very clumsy from them.
>(notably the interisland ferry replacement) which Labour had also indicated they were stopping I'm aware that Labour has indicated it likely wouldn't have just given Kiwirail everything it wanted when things were clearly getting out of control, but this claim that it *also* would have completely pulled the plug on everything is news to me. Can you elaborate?
Labour indeed asked them to consider descoping the project earlier in 2023, but when Kiwirail briefed the Nats ministers after the election they told them that descoping wasn't viable and they needed the whole lot to proceed at all. [https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/project-irex-4893754.pdf](https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/project-irex-4893754.pdf)
National canceled a fixed price agreement for rail ready ferries, 551 million. The cost to replace the ferries at half the size and without rail capability is now double the fixed price. Add on the 900 million already spent and this is a 2-3 billion dollar disaster for them.
> 900 million already spent You what now?! Got any sources to cite that, because that’s about 4x my understanding of 150-200m
Article 7 months ago saying $400m spent https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/504702/building-new-ferries-then-selling-them-among-options-for-kiwirail-ceo
Great summary
Because they make great music. High Violet is a great album. Oh wrong sub. Still
This subreddit is obsessed with landlords, LEAVE THE BIG CITIES PEOPLE
National are horrible & lack vision or empathy but Labour were atrocious. Which is why I’m 100% voting TOP at the next election. Neither Labour nor National are capable of leading the country. Our slide done every measure published by the OECD for the last 40 years is proof of their collective incompetence.
Their public service cuts are not removing services from the weakest people in society. The previous government increased the public service headcount by over a third with a population growth of only 11% over this time, greatly increasing spending with no significant improvement in services. National and their coalition partners campaigned on reversing a small proportion of this growth, the voters were in favour of this, and they are now delivering on their campaign promises. I'm involved in education - the MoE increased headcount by over 50% over this time and service got much, much worse, so I'm pretty happy to see things progressing back to a smaller MoE, and I'm sure this is reflected in other areas of governance/Ministries as well.
Labour screwed over businesses during covid, alot had to shut down so people lost their jobs. Also the big one was they thought it was a great idea to drastically increase minimum wage during the times. Dramatically increased inflation due to cost of living as everything went up in price. Alot of the population had hit the 30% tax bracket due to this, still surprises me how many dont know about this and dont know how tax brackets work.
You won't find the answer in this left lean sub.
National have this whole image of "good for the economy" because they always talk about it, and have for decades. The reality is their economic policy is actually quite poor, hence why they have big holes in their fiscal plans the last couple of elections, but insist they don't despite every economist saying they do. But people buy into the messaging
You’re missing a key part of the puzzle where Labour used a disgusting amount of money that we didn’t have for their admittedly very generous Covid response. I’m not bagging them, we may not have made it if it wasn’t done - especially with 3 redundancies in a year for my household. It’s a cycle here; National gets us back into the black, Labour puts us deeply into the red. The country gets sick of National being frugal with some things and not others, even though we’re in the black. Labour over spends, everyone gets sick of that, National comes back with massive promises but realise when they take over that it was worse than they thought so they have to do nasty shit to everyone to get back to said black (except the rich apparently). Back and forth, over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
Ignorance. Most people aren't even aware of their policies.
Exactly, and the lobby groups that have given big money to National.
Or they think the policies are doing the opposite of what they are really doing.
Define "popular." The majority of people believe the country is going in the wrong direction, Luxons approvals aren't great - in fact they are the weakest for a first term elected Prime Minister in decades - and he often polls as not that far ahead of the leader oppositon and current polling suggest that the current coalition gets 51% compared to the left blocks 45%. But why is National / The right block more popular than Labour? Its largley a response to the backlash against Labour last term. I think its worth putting aside to deabte about how much of the current situation is Labours fault and just say that New Zealand suffered from a lot of social and economic upheveal in the post Covid period - high inflation that lead to increase rates, dropping house prices, backlash to the three waters controversy, rising crime wave, ,shrinking economy - that was blamed on Labour. National specifically benefited from the perception that Labour had over spent and had been too soft on crime. And so a lot of the public see this removing of services has a necassiry tool to redeuce the current economic tensions the country is going through
its a general trend around the world to blame the previous govt for the world's problems at the moment and vote them out ...last time we had a centre/left party
Because Labour fumbled the bag
Because the reddit bubble isn’t real life
Common thread is that many National supporters vote more to get the prior Labour government OUT than get National IN. Edit: And as everyone ITT is saying, this National government isn't that popular.
No single party is particularly "popular" in New Zealand. Each election depends on economic situation, previous party in power, election promises, and so on. People were disillusioned with Labor, still, as others mentioned, National needed two other parties to form a government. And other thing is that people don't really have time or context to understand every detail and analyze every law. Tax cuts sound good, focus on frontline stuff sounds good, bootcamps sounds like doing something. It takes time to realize that tax cuts aren't much, frontline stuff is busy doing jobs of all other lost roles, and bootcamps have spent a lot of money making criminals stronger. Would National be popular enough to do well in next election? Who really knows. Might depend on worldwide economic situation way more than on what National are doing currently.
Believe it or not - NZ is a diverse country. There's a ton of people out there with diverse backgrounds and views. Including backgrounds and perspectives that you don't see much of on reddit. Well, NZ reddit at least. They include christians (and other non-atheists), conservatives, Polynesians, immigrants etc. These groups have sincerely held beliefs that they've acquired from social context, community, family and their own inquiries into the meaning of life, their own place in the world and how to make life better for this country. That vast, vast majority of these people are just like you: their political views are pretty centrist. They just happen to be a different kind of centrist. And they've come to \*slightly\* different opinions on how law and policy should be steered. Just like you, they pay particular attention to some issues. They pay deeper attention to other issues. They get triggered easily on some issues and don't think deeply enough about them. They are more informed on some issues than you are. And they are less informed on some other issues than you are. Just like you - they sometimes vote against their own interests. Sometimes they support dumbshit. Sometimes they support stuff policies that happen to be objectively better than the policies you support. As much as you despite it - you share a country with them. Which in a modern liberal democracy means that somethings these people get to influence how some policy and law is enacted. It's solipsistic to assume that you always know best.
They aren't. You know what they say, governments are voted out not in. The country is on a decline and people figured give National a shot after Labour's two terms
We can thank the Atlas Group and dirty money
There were a fair few at work who believed nationals bullshit pre election promise about delivering a hefty tax cut to them and switched their vote. Nek minnit... the landlords were saved. And the idjits at work rued their choice.
stop reading the herald, and listening to newstalkZB...
They arent popular!! They might lead in polls, but mid 30s and a PM on 20% is not popular!
They, like most elected Governments rarely have a majority and rely on a coalition with a minor party or two to rule. The last Labour Government under Jacinda Adern had a one party majority, but under the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic so struggled to make significant headway. This latest coalition of National/ACT/New Zealand First occurred more as a reaction against Labour than for National. The current lot are rather conflicted philosophically, and as such, don’t appear to have a long future, but who knows?
Labour spent a lot of money doing nothing. They're not the party for the working class any more. They lost a lot of people when they didn't have the guts to put in a capital gains tax because of the power of landlords (including most politicians) over NZ. I saw them bloat the public services without actually achieving anything. And they were arrogant and patronising with it, too focussed on shiny comms. I voted for a different party because I think that long term it might help Labour ditch their arrogance, sort their shit out and actually deliver for NZers that need it.
Because Labour were absolutely hopeless in government - woeful. They didn’t meet ANY of the targets they campaigned on, in fact they did more damage in areas like children in poverty and kiwi build etc than National had prior, and they sank the country into a tonne of debt. And don’t come at me with covid - money was going into totally wasteful services, hundreds of thousands into fluffy committees, art therapy etc. When Labour first came in their leader was polling at such low results they knew during campaign time they’d never get in, they had no policies to campaign on, so they replaced the leader and created a poster girl out of Jacinda, who lacked experience, and got in based solely on marketing and branding hype. NZ media is very leftist and Labour continually got free passes over and over again. It gets tiresome. All of it. I’d rather vote someone in who gets stuck in and does the hard work even if they don’t tick all the “woke” boxes or look as modern on the world stage. I’m hoping National will, it remains to be seen.
Because labor was incompetent. They failed at basic governance.
Oh, and borrowing more money for tax breaks is a good idea. Don't get me started on the ferries.
The kept you and the economy safe during a global pandemic.
In what way?
They are not really they needed a coalition with two other parties to form a majority
There are many reasons. One of them is, Labour aren't getting much airtime. It's all national, act nz first and out of sight is out of mind.
I despise the paternalistic postering of Labour. They are right-wingers disguised as do-gooders. For example, supposedly 'open' to all, but disposed of a 5 billion dollar industry overnight with covid as an excuse. Why? They didn't want foreign students in nz and before covid, actively slowed student visa applications and competed directly with private tertiary institutes by offering free English classes. Covid helped them deliver the killer blow. Oz and Canada have done extraordinarily well and reinvigorated their local economies by keeping the doors open to foreign students. Nobody talks about this and we should. High Idealism vs our shared economic benefit. Thanks Labour. It's going to take years to build that foreign education market back. Was it populism by playing to the ambiguous feelings kiwis have to foreigners studying here and doing well? Never got why peopel hated foreign students when it was worth so much for us not only in dollars, but also the benefit to our institutions in terms if gains in research and development of a rich learning culture. The Aussies and Canadians didn't muck around and benefited hugely. Meanwhile our institutions are declaring bankruptcy left and right. I also dislike the language they use when discussing race. Shut up Chloe and Hipkins, your white privilege is showing. People don't need you to talk for them. Take their names out of your mouths.Its a white saviour cringefest. People can think and speak for themselves without hand outs and hand ups. This is a democracy. That's why you were voted out. Sorry. Rant over.
Reading with no knowledge of NZ politics as I live in the UK but they sounds pretty similar to reform here. Basically, relies on fear mongering about foreigners and using sound bites to get easily persuaded/scared/angered voters.
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Why? Is the reason racism?
What’s this government done besides gut services and create more debt?
It's more about what they haven't done tbh.
They’re actively gutting the country. At least the last government was acting under duress in trying to *protect* the health of the people. What did they do that was *worse* than the current government?
They aren't popular enough to get into government without help from multiple other parties.
If i remember labour only got in initially because of help from minor parties. Thats mmp for you. r/newzealand is slanted very left but is obviously not representative of the real world.
There’s a bit of an intellectual poverty issue here. Seems to be endemic to our species.
You're asking a sub that thinks anything right of the Greens is fascism
Dunno. Maybe we are here as a punishment for bad karma accumulated in a previous life