- cross-posted to:
- newzealand@lemmy.nz
- cross-posted to:
- newzealand@lemmy.nz
Gap between left and right blocks has opened up, but NZ first seems likely to make it to parliament, which could make coalition negotiations interesting.
Labour is the big loser, and they should be asking serious questions about their campaign. Most of the other parties are fairly stable, with departing Labour voters seemingly moving fairly evenly among the other major parties.
They really should reverse their stance on a wealth tax. Both of their coalition partners have it and surveys are showing a majority of the population are in support of it.
As popular as Chris Hipkins is, his choice of policies in ruling out a wealth tax, and removing GST off fruits and veges - both of which have gone against his revenue and finance ministers have probably lost him a lot of core centre left voters.
Yeah, I think the GST off fruit and veges was a major blunder. Even if it makes sense as a policy (which is far from clear), it was their first major policy announcement. Basically, their headline policy of the campaign. But it really doesn’t do much for cost of living… it just makes them look like they have no real solutions. Even if they didn’t want to go with a wealth or capital gains tax, they could have come up with something better than that.
It’s Labour’s equivalent of National’s “we’ll build a road” opening gambit last election.
I support them destroying themselves. If their core voters abandon them, that will teach them a lesson. Two years of failure and we’re supposed to what… respect them?
Honestly, I think Labour’s biggest problem is they’ve been in power for two terms, and apart from managing Covid very well, have achieved very little and failed to deliver so much. I have little to no faith in their ability to deliver anything at all at this point.
Unashamedly stolen from a reddit post from a year ago, not my list:
Definitely stuff to argue in here, but the rhetoric of “Labour has achieved nothing” is false. They have done plenty of good, it is just small incremental changes. Do I think they should have done more? Absolutely. Would I vote for them? The jury is still out. But please stop thinking they have achieved nothing “other than managing COVID”.
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There is a lot of things I would have liked to see Labour do. CGT is a big one, adjust tax brackets to inflation is another.
However, I haven’t seen Labour do anything that actively made the CoL crisis worse. Some of National’s policies will do exactly that.
Citation needed.
There’s so many things in there that Labour had nothing to do with, and many more that are incredibly unimpressive.
They did not build 150k houses, our building industry did.
Transmission gully, for example, was authorised and begun under national, things like minimum wage, RUC and excise duty cuts are very easy to do, and a bunch more are just handing out money for various reasons.
That list is the equivalent of seeing “power steering” listed as a feature on a car for sale, it’s kinda sad it’s considered a feature, and you know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
If Labour gets the blame for the cost of living crisis, which is a global issue, and the housing crisis, which stems from failures of multiple government’s, why can they not claim things that, while easy, happened under their watch?
That is always the case, though. People say they failed at their promise to build houses, but when it is pointed out how many were built you say “that wasn’t them”? You can’t have it both ways.
Transmission gully I agree with. The rest are small changes, but changes nonetheless. You (and others) claim they have done nothing, and this shows that isn’t true. You could argue they haven’t done enough, and you’d hey a resounding agreement from most, but you can’t argue they have done nothing.
Also, “just handing money out” is an incredibly naive take.
“This car has no features” “It has power steering, which is a feature” “That’s not good enough, every car has that”
Stop moving the goalposts.
I mean, if every car has it, it’s not a feature, is it?
The housing claim is especially dishonest, if they claim to have built X number of houses, you’d be expect them to be a large part of the process, either building the house as an organisation, or at the very least being the ones ordering and paying for the property. Even claiming Kiwibuild homes is a tenuous claim, as they’re built for a customer, and the GOVT is merely the guarantor.
Labour has no right to claim those houses as an achievement.
So what you mean then is “this card does not have anything above what we expect”. This is not the same as "it has no features.
Labour has not done as much as you expected. Sure, to this i agree. But to claim they have done nothing is simply false.
Either the government has no hand in the building, in which case you cannot blame them for “not building houses”, or the government does have a hand in building houses, in which case you cannot accuse them of not building homes.
You cannot have it both ways.
I’m genuinely baffled as to what your point is here.
Wow I didn’t think I needed to spell it out any more simpler than that. I guess I gave you too much credit.
You said Labour didn’t build houses like they said they would.
I pointed out how many were built under Labour.
You claim the government has nothing to do with building houses.
If a government has nothing to do with building houses, then they cannot be held responsible for “not building houses”.
If a government does have something to do with building houses, then the claim that they didn’t build houses is false.
So which is it?
Nearly all of these things are just tweaks that can be achieved by signing some documents. The country has gone backwards under Labour and it will go backwards under National too. I’m going to wait for boomers to die off before I consider voting in another election. There’s no point in voting for parties that will protect landlords and stamp out legislation that will allow for new builds. Which is all of them.
They did this to protect themselves not to protect us.
I disagree that it has gone backwards because of Labour. They have not done enough, but they have done something. I hard agree National will head backwards.
Disagree.
I’d have preferred it if they’d just done nothing to be honest. By “doing something” but still changing nothing, it just gives them an excuse to nag for votes again, which they don’t deserve.
They didn’t “change nothing” though. They have changed many things for the better. See the list above. Even if you leave off stuff that’s marginal, there are still plenty of good positive changes that have been made whole Labour was in government.
Many of Nationals policies will have a negative impact on society. How many labour policies have harmed society?
If those voter’s moved left instead its not a loss for the left. The problem is that it didn’t win any voters from the right.