Bring on the legislative ping-pong!

In 2020 an independent review suggested a repeal and replacement of the RMA system. The then-Labour government spent years doing the right thing, consulting affected groups and developing consensus policy, before progressing two replacement bills (the Spatial Planning Act 2023 and Natural and Built Environment Act 2023) through parliament under the normal legislative process. They eventually passed right before the 2023 election. The radical far-right National regime immediately repealed them. National unveiled its own version late last year, including American bullshit like "regulatory relief" (a propertarian scam to fiscally intimidate councils against regulating), and of course cutting the public out of environmental decision-making completely so Shane Jones's donors can drive their bulldozers everywhere. It came back from select committee last week, and its now (somehow) even worse, with the regime planning to statutorily nullify existing Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements (agreements between iwi and councils to manage the former's statutory consultation rights under both planning law and Treaty settlements) and allowing Ministers to rubberstamp consents despite their being otherwise illegal. The latter is a giant Henry VIII clause, fast-track on steroids, and further entrenches the nexus of corruption which has proven so profitable to government ministers with the fast track law. It is a recipe for further naked corruption and environmental devastation.

This is not what the public wants. According to the bill's departmental report, 74% of submissions were opposed, with only 3.7% in support. But its what donors wanted, and that's who buys this regime. But such overwhelming public opposition is a licence for the next government to take a hatchet to the bill and change it - or simply repeal it outright.

Chris Hipkins has (sadly) ruled out the latter. Its disappointing - I want to see National's legislation, all their legislation, burned to the ground and the earth salted - but understandable. Starting from scratch will take them three years again, just in time for a potential repeal. Chopping the obnoxious features out can be done in one, with a full parliamentary process. Or, if they're in the parts of the bill which take effect immediately and do irreparable harm, it can be done in a day under all-stages urgency. The next government doesn't need to hurry, as if passed the law won't take effect until 2029, but it also shouldn't piss about. Getting it done quickly and embedding the changes in the new planning process so that they are difficult to unpick without everyone having to do a shitton of extra work needs to be a priority.

And sure, if the government changes again, National could just reimpose their radical propertarian bulldozer bullshit. But so what? Let them play legislative ping-pong trying to repeatedly impose their radical, unpopular, weird ideas - and make them pay the price for it. "Environmental law should actually protect the environment", "Ministers shouldn't be allowed to take bribes", and "No-one should be able to approve a nuclear waste dump, no matter how much money someone slips Shame Jones" are not unpopular propositions in this country. Every time National espouses those ideas is going to cost them, and hopefully lose them more support. So make them argue for those unpopular positions as often as possible. Don't let them win by default because labour was too cowardly to fight back.

Eating Labour's lunch

Yesterday the Greens announced a significant election policy: default union membership. New employees would automatically be enrolled in a "default union", but would be able to opt out. Unions approved, of course, but what did Labour, the supposed party of the union movement think about it?

Yes, they were "non-committal". The same way they're "non-committal" about anything actually left-wing these days (when they're not actively hostile to it, like taxing the rich).

Snark about Labour useless aside, this is actually good policy. It's a nudge towards union membership, making it frictionless to join, while still respecting freedom of association. People can easily opt out, and the first month of temporary membership will cost them nothing. The big question is how many will. Union membership dropped to about 20% after National's Employment Contracts Act, and has never really recovered. This will almost certainly see a significant increase, and provide a place to build from.

The core of the Clark government's industrial relations policy was "give unions the tools, and let them fight and win gains for themselves". That worked quite well. And it will work better with stronger unions. Membership by default will enable that, but also put real pressure on the unions to deliver real benefits for those new members, to demonstrate their relevance and utility - because people are not going to stay members if membership delivers nothing. Its a direct recipe for greater union power - a thing employers actually fear.

The Ardern government's alternative was to spend years building supposed consensus with employers for "fair pay agreements" - essentially a system of centrally negotiated industry-specific awards. These would supposedly deliver to workers regardless of union membership (if employers didn't drag out negotiations and litigate to prevent them from being completed). But then after all that work and despite that supposed consensus, the current regime simply repealed them. It turns out that the employers simply lied about supporting them. Who'd have thunk it?

The same can happen to any replacement system, or any legal tweaks a Labour-led government puts in (see National's reinstatement of the 90-day law, its removal of workplace protections for contractors, and what its doing to the Holidays Act). But the beauty of the Greens' proposal is that it is insulated against such moves. While a new government can repeal the law, union members will remain members until they decide not to be. So the boost to union power will survive a change of government, in a way that laws don't. And the concessions unions win in the interim, and the legal minimums they have written into their contracts "just for certainty" will survive too, and be that much harder to get rid of.

The Greens putting this out there puts the pressure on Labour to support it. And if they don't, or if they want to play silly buggers and pretend not to so they can "surrender" it in coalition negotiations, voters can vote for the party which will deliver the policy they like. If Labour doesn't like that, maybe they should start living up to their name, rather than being NeoLiberals in red ties.

The bidding war on solar

Last month National announced its solar power policy. It was the bare minimum, a version of the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme expansion advocated by Rewiring Aotearoa, but with the problem that no sane person would trust them to actually deliver on it. Because while they want the positive PR from announcing a solar policy, they don't actually want to spend any time on implementation when they could be doing more important things, like climate change denial and culture war bullshit, instead.

Today it was Labour's turn. And they've announced the same core policy - the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme - backed up with additional loans through lines companies, support for community batteries, and support for renters to get plug-in solar. Which is all good, and unlike National there's no doubts about implementation. Labour will actually do what it promises, at least if there's still a public service to do it with. Not least because their expected coalition partners, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, will hold them to it (and push it further).

Speaking of the Greens, while they haven't yet announced their solar policy, their 2023 version was twice as generous as Labour's. I'd expect them to be starting from that baseline, and then adding on extra support for renters and community ownership. In the meantime, they're pointing out that with the three largest parties in parliament all supporting the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme, the House can and should just legislate the required tweaks to allow it to be used for solar, rather than making people wait until after the election. But then, that might make National actually deliver on their promise, rather than treating it as a meaningless soundbite.

Cheap but effective

Labour has finally announced some policy, with a promise of cheaper public transport:

Labour has vowed to cap public transport fares at $20 a week in main centres and $10 everywhere else if elected.

Its fare cap policy, announced on Wednesday, would put money back into New Zealanders' back pockets, said leader Chris Hipkins.

"This is real cost-of-living relief. It means cheaper commutes, more money left at the end of the week, and a public transport system that works for everyone."

This seems quite effective. Most public transport systems already include weekly fare caps, so it uses existing mechanisms. It will push people to use public transport (so its a climate change and fuel saving and congestion policy), and deliver real savings for doing so (so its a cost of living policy as well). And it costs fuck all - only $65 million a year. What's surprising is that we're not doing it already.

Hopefully there'll be a lot more of this. When parties are standing for election, they owe it to us to tell us what they hope to do in power. Labour's previous "small target strategy" is a strategy of deceit, an attempt to deny us the information we need to make an informed choice on how to cast our vote. It is fundamentally dishonest and fundamentally undemocratic. And we deserve better than that from those who want to be our leaders.

Fucking absurd

Since time immemorial - or at least the 1990's - the National party's Big Economic Idea was cuts. Slash the state! Sack people! Give away billions in tax cuts to cronies so future governments couldn't fund anything! And to justify this peculiar fixation, they talk constantly about debt. There's too much of it! We can't afford the interest! We're about to go bankrupt! And sadly, this ideological framework has been swallowed wholesale by Labour, who sternly promise to keep debt low and not increase spending

But as Bernard Hickey points out this morning, none of this is true. Sure, the NZ government has $426 billion of debt - but it has $611 billion of assets, a positive net worth of $185 billion. And interest payments - which are now fixed and in NZ dollars, unlike the 1980's - are just 2% of government revenue. Which is perfectly sustainable.

And yet, National still keeps demanding cuts. Meanwhile, we have failing infrastructure, collapsing public services, and 33,000 homeless children. Hickey asks the obvious questions: would you leave kids homeless when you were worth $207 billion? Would you leave your kids homeless with interest costs of 2% of income? Answering "yes" to those isn't just fucking absurd, it's absolutely sociopathic. But I guess that's the sort of person right-wing politics attracts: the sort of person who wants to deliberately starve and freeze children, while running the country into the ground, all so they and their rich mates can steal more from us.

We need to vote this NeoLiberal plague out. Both sides of it. Because as long as Labour remains committed to NeoLiberalism and the "too much debt" myth, they will continue doing exactly what National does. The only difference is they'll lie to us about how they're helping us while they fuck us over.

Deeply unethical

Yesterday, the Labour party announced its party list, parachuting senior police officer Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo in at 13th place to show how much they care about "law and order". Which immediately caused problems, because Naidoo apparently hadn't told his bosses until the last minute.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins claims this is all OK, because while they had been talking to Naidoo "over a couple of months", his selection "was done at the last minute deliberately" to enable him to stand. But that's not OK. We have a politically neutral public service, and to protect this, section 52 of the Electoral Act 1993 requires public servants seeking office to take leave. This is normally from nomination day, but where candidacy undermines the perception of political neutrality, it may be for longer. While the police are not public servants, these provisions explicitly apply to them. And Naidoo is a senior police manager, working on policy issues, and that's simply not something you can do while seeking political office.

On top of that, the Police Manual chapter on elections and political matters specifically requires police employees seeking public office to

advise their District Commander or Director at the earliest opportunity so that the potential impact on their role as a Police employee and any necessary plan of action can be discussed early.

An ethical person following the rules would have advised their managers when they were considering seeking office, to ensure that risks were managed and they had obviously obeyed the rules. Naidoo didn't do that. Instead, he and Labour seem to have contrived a process, with the latter deliberately manipulating its normal candidate selection procedures so he could pretend not to be running, so he could keep on collecting his salary (and, potentially, accessing police information) right up until the last minute.

This is deeply unethical behaviour which reflects badly on everyone involved. It doesn't meet the standard of ethics we expect from police or political parties. And given how low our expectations are of either, that's pretty damning.

Not a government in waiting

The fundamental job of the opposition in a Westminster system is to show us the alternative, both in people and in policies. When the government makes some policy announcement, the opposition is meant to tell us what they would do instead, and how it serves our needs better. But when the government said it would be responding to the American fossil fuel crisis, Labour's Chris Hipkins literally couldn't be bothered:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins isn’t providing an alternative plan of action to help struggling New Zealanders facing pain at the pump and the threat of rising prices elsewhere.

Asked repeatedly what alternatives Labour could suggest, Hipkins said the onus to present ideas was on the current Government.

And it is. But there's also an onus on him to show us what he would do if he was in charge. And not just because its a democratic obligation - its also a way to win votes, to convince people you would do the job better! The Greens understand this: they were ready with a pile of Green policy and an offer of votes to pass it over the objections of National's coalition partners in the unlikely event that national wanted to (they did not). And hopefully they'll reap the reward from that. But Labour just can't be bothered trying to convince us. Its unclear if this is due to arrogance, a belief that they're just entitled to govern and so don't need to convince us plebs, or just because there is genuinely nothing they would do differently from National. But either stinks, and shows that they're not a government in waiting.

As for Hipkins, we're paying him $298,000 a year plus slush, and he's not doing the job! So why are we paying him then?

A government without a plan

Today the regime held an emergency, covid-style one o'clock press conference to announce its response to the US-caused global fuel crisis, at which they announced... nothing. Oh, they're monitoring the situation, and might consider cost of living assistance at some unspecified time in the future, if Rimmer lets them, but for now its strictly do nothing. Which is what you get in a crisis when you elect a bunch of anti-government weirdos who believe that government can only be a problem, and never a solution.

Meanwhile, there's a rising tide of commentary calling the regime's 2023 decision to shitcan the clean car discount, and subsequent decisions to weaken the clean-car standard, shortsighted. This would indeed be the week to be driving an EV, but thanks to this regime's fossil ideology, there are less of them on the roads than we would have had if they'd left it alone. And as we're all learning, electrified transport (and electrified everything else) isn't just about the climate - its also about the cost of living, energy security, and social resilience. National's shit decision-making has locked our country into a high-cost dependency on unstable foreign regimes.

So what should we be doing? Greater Auckland has a list of both short-term and longer-term measures. And while the focus is understandably going to be on getting us through the immediate shortages, now would be a great time for Labour to rise to the occasion, and stand up and tell us how they're going to crash-electrify all the things so that we don't have to deal with this issue again (the Greens of course already have, years ago). But I guess that would require them to have an actual position on something, and that seems beyond them at the moment.

Pushing on an open door

RNZ has polling today on taxing billionaires, and its not good for the plutocrats:

The second poll commissioned in February 2026 revealed that 66 percent agreed that New Zealand's economic system was not set up to effectively to address issues like housing, healthcare and climate change.

Half of New Zealanders also agreed that billionaires shouldn't exist while people still struggled with basic necessities like food.

Sixty-eight percent supported billionaires being taxed more to fund public goods like healthcare, housing and climate action.

And another 37 percent were in favour of introducing a billion-dollar wealth cap to minimise the amount of wealth any person could legally hold.

This level of economic dissatisfaction and support for taxing billionaires means that taxing wealth fairly is pushing on an open door. The public is waiting for the government to do it, but so far only the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have committed. Meanwhile, Labour is still flailing around with its weak and pathetic "let's not actually tax anybody" capital gains tax. Will they rise to the occasion and lead people where they want to be led? Or put their own property portfolios before the public and continue to be toadies for the wealthy?

You don't win elections by telling voters to expect less

Aotearoa is broken. The economy is fucked. The dogshit vandal regime is smashing our democracy, our public services, and our society, while pushing the accelerator on burning the planet to the ground. People are crying out for change. And so Labour, the largest opposition party and so the de facto leader if there is a change of government, is telling them "nope, you won't get that from us!" First, we had finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds promising to continue the NeoLiberal austerity which has gutted our public services and allowed our infrastructure to decay. And now we have party leader Chris Hipkins - the de facto Prime Minister of any new government - telling people to dream smaller:

But the wider public-facing focus of the conference was a presentation of Labour as a very sensible-sounding Government-in-waiting, with small targeted changes to allow for more health spending, but nothing big enough for National to really attack.

[...]

Hipkins told media Labour would need to do more than just critique National to win. Yet despite borrowing the design style of New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for the posters the party faithful were waving at Hipkins, the new policy he had to offer yesterday was far less ambitious than anything Mamdani would put his name to – a new low-interest loan scheme to let 50 GPs a year set up their own practices. It’s hard to see this being a policy that defines much of the campaign. A small, easily achievable promise is exactly what Labour is eager to put out currently. The party will tell anyone who asks that it was making too many promises that hurt them last time they were in government.

Which will no doubt have the smooth-brained political consultants nodding and stroking their beards and murmuring sagely about "small target strategies". Quite apart from the inherent deceit - a "small target strategy" is one where a party deliberately refuses to say what it plans to do in government, so its lying to voters - its a mistake. In order to regain power, Labour needs to increase its vote share to 40% of the vote (it can get less if it is willing to deal with a three-way coalition situation, but 40% plus 10% from a coalition partner is the basic equation). Its not going to get there by telling people to expect less. While it might avoid offending swinging middle voters, its not going to inspire anyone to actually tick their box rather than shrug and stay home.

Its also a complete failure to read the room. People want change. Not just in people, but in policies. Not just in tone, but in substance. Sure, we want the current regime gone, an end to the regime's weekly attacks on Māori, poor people, parents, children, democracy, and everything else - but we also want the harm caused by those attacks to be undone, insofar as it is possible. We want te Tiriti restored. We want democracy respected. We want pay equity and worker's rights restored. And we want the health and education systems to function. But Labour isn't in any hurry to do that bit. They'll change the faces and the tone and stop the attacks, but they're not promising to fix anything (or at least, anything which might cost money - can't offend the rich, after all). It really is as if their entire critique of government boils down to it simply being a matter of the wrong people being in charge, and things would be infinitely better if only their team were the ones collecting the fat salaries and juicy appointments...

Fortunately there are other left-leaning parties who are actually promising to change things and undo the damage the vandal regime is causing. And because we have MMP, voting for one of them doesn't actually hurt the chances of a left-wing government (you're just contributing to a different part of that equation, while still helping to boost the total). So I'd suggest that if you're a left voter who wants more, who doesn't want to dream smaller and expect less, then vote for one of them and leave Labour to rot.

Still useless

So, Labour has finally, shambolically, released its capital gains tax policy, and as signalled it is a weak extension of the bright-line test, covering only non-residential property (but not farms), pre-compromised into oblivion in a desperate effort to avoid offending anybody. When they teased this idea back in September, I said that they're going to pay the political price of a CGT, in order to not raise enough money to do anything useful. All cost, no benefit. That hasn't changed. About the only thing going for this policy is that it can be implemented quickly, within a year of an election. And it can be extended later to cover the things Labour has excluded, like farms and shares and other financial instruments, some of which might require tricky policy work. But Labour isn't talking about that, so they're not even teasing incrementalism here. So even if you have an optimistic view that this is part of a secret plan to incrementally impose a comprehensive CGT one sector at a time, Labour simply can't be trusted to follow through on it.

(As for their quid pro quo - three free GP visits a year for everyone! - they've lumbered it with a pile of NeoLiberal rationing and a de facto universal ID card. Which is just intrusive, pointless waste. FFS, just fund health...)

It is clear that the state needs money to pay for the things we want it to do. It is also clear that we need to arrest inequality and the political power of the ultra-rich, by taking money away from the wealthy and using it for public purposes. Labour's bullshit half-measure doesn't really do any of these things. So I won't be voting for them. Instead, I'll be voting for a party which promises an actual wealth tax, which whacks the rich and raises enough revenue to actually fix things. I encourage everyone on the left, who wants proper public services and hates billionaires, to do the same. Labour's half-measure is OK as a transitional step towards a real wealth tax. But its not enough - and looking at their institutional culture of complying-in-advance with the demands of the rich, nothing from them ever will be.

Typically useless

On Saturday, the Herald's Thomas Coughlan reported that Labour was inching its way to a capital gains tax. But in typical Labour fashion, they're watering it down so much as to exclude almost everything:

It would probably look like a maximalist bright-line test: family homes exempt, farms also likely spared, but residential investment property and the family bach are all in.

Tax would be levied at realisation, not the once-favoured “deemed return” method, which is a wee bit too much like a wealth tax on people who aren’t always that wealthy.

[...]

Trade-offs abound. Political saleability comes at a fiscal cost. Oliver’s paper reckoned his limited CGT would raise barely 39% of the broad CGT’s take – around $2.4 billion after 10 years. Not trivial, but still less in 10 years than Labour’s 2023 wealth tax would have netted in one. At worst, it could make Labour look unserious about tackling the alleged austerity it’s spent the parliamentary term prosecuting.

So, they're going to pay the political price of a CGT, in order to not raise enough money to do anything useful. All cost, no benefit. And meanwhile, their rival parties, on whom they depend to even be a government, are going for simpler wealth taxes, which whack the rich to raise enough revenue to actually fix things, while leaving normal people - almost everybody, in fact - completely unaffected. Which seems simpler, easier, and clearer than Labour's bullshit.

If you're on the left, and you want better public services and a reduction in inequality, why vote for half-measures? And why vote for a party which waters its policies down, in order to comply in advance with the rich? Fuck the rich. By definition, we outnumber them 99-to-one. And if our country imagines itself to be democratic, our government should serve us, not them. It is an appalling indictment of our mainstream political parties that they continually pander to this tiny minority, while screwing over almost everybody who actually votes for them.

So next election, if you want change, vote for it. Vote for parties who will hold a metaphorical gun to labour's head to force them to do what is necessary. Don't vote for useless bootlickers.

A clear message

There's an election next year, and we're already seeing the usual posturing about who will work with who. Today it's Labour refusing to work with Te Pāti Māori in the wake of the latter's victory in the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection - a victory which showed that Māori voters don't want to be represented by Labour and don't want their representatives being constantly over-ruled by Pakeha primarily concerned with pandering to other Pakeha. Which probably sounds "tough" to Chris Hipkins and the Pakeha he is trying to pander to. But there's someone Hipkins seems to have forgotten in all his ruling out: the voters. Because on current polling, Te Pāti Māori is vital to forming a Labour-led government. And that looks like it will be the case unless Labour drags its own vote well into the upper part of the 35 - 40% range (and then assuming that it grows it from National, not at the expense of the Greens). Which seems... unlikely when the party is essentially offering voters nothing, other than that Ministers will wear a different coloured tie while delivering the same old austerity.

In fact, Hipkins' refusal sends voters a clear message: if you want real change, you need to vote for it. And that means voting for the Greens or Te Pāti Māori rather than Labour. If you want wealth taxes, better public services, climate action, a Tiriti-centric government, and the repeal of all National's racist legislation, don't vote Labour. Vote for one of the parties who actually advocates for those things instead. Vote for them to hold a democratic gun to Labour's head and force them to implement those policies - or surrender the power and positions and prestige and salaries which they crave so much.

Labour won't like this. But if they want the votes of people who want change and the support of the parties we elect - rather than taking both for granted - they need to earn them. They do this by offering us something, rather than arrogantly insisting on an obligation to support them, as if they were the only alternative to National. They're not, and they never have been - but they especially haven't been since 1996, when we got MMP. Which was almost 30 years ago. You'd think their brains would have caught up by now...

Hipkins can huff and puff and rule parties out all he likes. But at the end of the day he has to play the hand we deal him. That's our weapon. And we should use it.

Wag or be wagged

The Greens held their AGM over the weekend, and in her speech, co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick claimed to be leading the opposition. Which seems to be obviously correct, in that the Greens are setting the direction for the entire opposition bloc, by virtue of being the ones providing the ideas. And this isn't just a question of Labour's current policy-silence, but of their long-term ideological emptiness and their focus on being managers of the status quo (and getting the prestige and salaries) rather than leading the changes we need to make.

The only policy area Labour has any real interest and skill in is workers rights (and even then: income insurance? Really?) In other key areas - income inequality, tax policy, climate change, industrial policy - they just follow the Greens. Green policy one election tends to become Labour policy at the next one (and, if the public is won over, National policy after that - see home insulation schemes, or the bright-line test). And partly this is a victory by default: Labour's perpetual cowardice and fear of criticism means they're too chickenshit to put their own ideas out there, so the Green ones become the de facto left solution because Labour isn't offering any alternative.

Which makes the stuff about the Greens wagging the Labour dog amusing. They're already wagging that dog - just very slowly.

Obviously, as a Green voter, I would welcome speeding up that process. The more MPs the Greens and Te Pāti Māori bring to a left coalition, the louder their voices will be, and the more Labour will have to give them. But also, I want them to play hardball on this. Which will admittedly be easier if Labour doesn't have any agenda of its own.

As for Labour concern that the prospect of Green-led policy could drive voters to National, that sounds like a "you" problem. It also sounds untrue, given public attitudes towards wealth taxes and higher public spending. In fact, in light of those polls, one might also call it an elite lie to deter change to the status quo. But either way, Labour's solution is obvious: if it doesn't want people to think it will adopt Green policy by default, get some of your own, and stop whining that people expect you to actually stand for something.

Climate Change: Labour chickening out again

For the past 20 years, agriculture has been the glaring gap in our climate change policy. Responsible for 50% of our emissions, it was initially excluded from the ETS, and then - under Green Pressure - was to be slowly bought in at a 90% subsidy. But National repealed all that, and so farmers are back to enjoying a free ride, spewing out methane while gouging us for butter.

We were all hoping that the next government would change that, and finally force farmers to pay their way. But of course Labour is chickening out again:

Labour might not campaign on putting agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme at the 2026 election, saying the longstanding policy is “under review”, along with the rest of Labour’s policy.

Asked about Labour’s policy on agricultural emissions, Hipkins told Herald Now’s Ryan Bridge “we’re reviewing all of that at the moment”.

“We’re talking to the farmers about that as we go through that review process,” Hipkins said.

But note who they're not talking to: the 90% of kiwis who live in cities, and who pay for every gram of carbon we emit. The 90% of us who have been subsidising the pollution of a privileged, wealthy, rural elite for the past 20 years, and will be expected to keep subsidising them if Labour gets its way. The 90% of us who might actually vote Labour, and whose votes actually determine elections.

But I guess no-one ever thought the Labour Party was smart. Their continued protection of the status quo and desperate attempts to appeal to people who will never vote for them, at the expense of people who actually do, shows that their political model is just fundamentally broken.

As for what to do about it, Hipkins' message is crystal clear: the Greens need to make bringing agriculture into the ETS immediately and with no subsidies a bottom line at the next election. And if you want real climate policy, you need to vote for it - not for Labour chickenshittery.

Which side are you on, Labour?

Today will see an unprecedented moment in Parliament. A racist government whose leader opposes the "Maorification" of New Zealand is using its parliamentary majority to suspend opposition MPs from the House for being Māori, silencing them and the people they represent for up to 21 days. It is outrageous and anti-democratic; their own Speaker knows it is wrong, and they clearly do too. They're so ashamed of what they are doing - and scared of the public's reaction to it - that they have closed the public gallery, preventing anyone from watching their abuse of power.

This is a golden opportunity for the opposition Labour Party to stand up for our democracy and against this racist abuse of power. To show their voters which side they're on. To actually stand for something. So of course spineless jellyfish Chris Hipkins doesn't want to. Oh, he agrees the punishment is "too extreme", but he says Labour is "pretty unlikely" to filibuster the debate. So, he's going to take the leverage the Speaker handed him to force the government to compromise and adopt a more appropriate penalty, and he's going to do... nothing. Which is perhaps why the racist prime minister is now declaring there will be "no compromise" - because he knows Hipkins is weak and won't do anything other than whine and wring his hands.

But the Labour caucus isn't just Hipkins, and its MPs can speak even if its leader won't. And they should, if they want to continue in their gold-plated careers. Because their voters will be watching. And they will be judging. And silence, cowardice, and collaboration is unlikely to impress anyone.

Will Labour take on the oligarchs?

David Parker gave a big foreign policy speech this morning, reiterating the party's support for an independent (rather than boot-licking) foreign policy. Most of which was pretty orthodox - international law good, war bad, trade good, not interested in AUKUS, and wanting a demilitarised South Pacific (an area which presumably excludes Australia). But at the end, Parker strayed off foreign policy to talk about the world's big problems. And he identified two: gross inequality, and techbro oligarchs spreading misinformation:

The scourge of irresponsible social media, megalomaniacal tax avoiding tech barons, and irresponsible internet service providers is on my list of the important.

I have a view that we in the west have made a fundamental error in providing what is in effect an exclusion of liability for third party content.

He's not just talking about classic "misinformation" (whether state driven or not), but also defamation, threats, scams, and every other online evil. The current exclusion of liability means internet platforms face little incentive to police this (and every incentive to push them using their algorithms where it boosts "engagement"). Parker's solution is to remove that exclusion, make platforms liable, and "[l]eave it to the Courts to work out the balance between freedom of expression and the duty not to sell a harmful product."

Parker points out that we can use liability limits and safe harbours to encourage platforms to take active steps to remove harmful content. We already do this under the Films, Videos, and Publications Act to encourage platforms to remove objectionable content, and under the Harmful Digital Communications Act to encourage them to deal with complaints about harmful content. We could use similar means for scams.

All of this seems perfectly reasonable. Newspapers are liable, through the courts, Media Council, and Advertising Standards Authority, for what they choose to publish or allow to be published. There seems to be no reason why Facebook, YouTube, or XChan should be immune. Especially when they are making what are effectively editorial choices through their algorithms and moderation policies to highlight or bury, allow or deny certain content. Unlike the postal service or the phone company (which is where the exclusion originated), they're not just a dumb pipe. Treating them as one is causing definite harm, and its time the government put a stop to it.

...and while they're at it, they should put a stop to their systematic tax-cheating and lawlessness as well.

Want change? Don't vote Labour

The current National government is one of the worst in Aotearoa's history. And because of this, its also one of the most unpopular. A war on Māori, corrupt fast-track legislation, undermining the fight against climate change, the ferry fiasco, the school lunch disaster... none of these policies are making friends. People want them gone, and want the next government to make repealing them its first item of business. So naturally, Chris Hipkins has said he'll keep them all:

He also used his speech to advocate for a more collaborative approach to governing, referencing the coalition’s decisions to reverse many of Labour’s policies.

“I am not going to stand here and ask you to give your support to the Labour Party just so we can put everything back in place - and start the merry-go-round again,” he said.

“And I can assure you we aren’t going to spend our first year back in government pausing, cancelling, and reviewing everything.

“No more throwing the baby out with the bathwater just to make a political point.”

Or, to put it another way, "don't vote for us, because we won't change anything".

And Labour wonders why people have such contempt for them...

But this isn't just about Labour's spinelessness - its also a problem for our democracy. Because if elections don't change anything, if we just get the same shit policies delivered by the same apparatchiks, if major party collusion means the only real difference between them is the colour of their tie, then our democracy is simply a fraud and a scam. And if enough people get that idea, then we might actually try and change things for real, by means other than elections. And that's not the sort of outcome anyone should want.

Restore birthright citizenship

In 2005, Labour repealed the long-standing principle of birthright citizenship in Aotearoa. Why? As with everything else Labour does, it all came down to austerity: "foreign mothers" were supposedly "coming to this country to give birth", and this was "put[ting] pressure on hospitals". Then-Immigration Minister George Hawkins explicitly gave this as the reason during the law's first reading debate, saying:

Some people may come to New Zealand on temporary permits solely to give birth, so that their New Zealand - born children are citizens. Under current law those children are entitled to access publicly funded services such as health care and education. Restricting citizenship by birth will ensure that citizenship and its benefits are limited to people who have a genuine and ongoing link to New Zealand.

Twenty years later, and we're seeing the cost of this change: kiwi kids being threatened with deportation to foreign countries. And while public outrage seems to have caused the Minister to rethink, this should never have happened. People who were born here, have grown up here, have never known anywhere else should not be exiled from their country, or victimised due to the legal mistakes of their parents.

We should learn this lesson, and fix the underlying law which threatened to result in this injustice. And that means restoring birthright citizenship, not just to those born here in future, but also to those immorally deprived of it by the Clark government's cruel penny-pinching. And if the current government wants to quibble over this, we should ask them: are they really that small?

(And while we're at it: we should restore relationship rights too, so kiwis can be with the people they love).

Restoring the status quo is not enough

Labour held its party conference over the weekend, and Chris Hipkins gave a speech promising to make the current coalition a one term government. Along the way he made some policy promises: restoring free prescriptions, resuming the Smokefree Aotearoa policy, restarting the build of Dunedin hospital, restoring state housing investment, reinvesting in new Cook Strait ferries, restoring public transport funding, re-enacting fair pay agreements. There was one new policy: ditching AUKUS (good). But almost all of labour's agenda can be summed up as putting things back the way they were before Luxon came to power. Or, to put it another way, simply restoring the status quo ante.

This is good and necessary, because Luxon has wrecked shit, and that needs to be fixed. But at the same time, its nowhere near enough. Because the pre-Luxon status quo wasn't exactly great - we had a climate crisis, a housing crisis, an inequality crisis, and Labour wasn't exactly moving fast on fixing any of them. We also had a government strangling itself with austerity, running down key government services out of a weird self-flagellating desire to meet arbitrary financial targets in an effort to appeal to people who would never vote for them, and who would accuse them of financial mismanagement and loose spending no matter what they did. And while Labour is talking about one of the big fixes again - a capital gains tax - they're still unclear on whether they want to actually do anything with the money, or just give it away in income tax cuts (in which case, sure, its a redistribution tool, but also makes you wonder what the fucking point is). And of course, they simply have no credibility on that issue, having promised and then backed away from it repeatedly, and there's no reason any of us should believe it will end any differently to the last time: in the party leader getting cold feet and swearing off actual effective change for the rest of their careers.

The core problem is that Labour seems to have no vision of what it actually wants, other than to be in power and get the big offices and big salaries and free limos again. It has a nostalgic vision of things being great when they were in charge, but nothing beyond that. Nothing they want to change. Nothing they want to do. Nothing they actually want to use power for, other than adding the letters "Hon" before their names.

And that is simply not enough. To point out the obvious, there are other opposition parties, who do know what they want, and are working hard to persuade us that we want it too. And a Labour Party which seems to want nothing beyond "put us in charge" deserves to lose to them. While good management is useful (just look at the current clown show), at the end of the day nobody fucking cares about managers.