So Little To Defend, So Much To Punish.

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MOST OF US use our votes in one of three ways: as a weapon; as a shield; as a tool. With early voting commencing in a month’s time, the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders would appear to be preparing to use their vote as either a weapon or a shield. All the signs point to those intent upon weaponising their vote being the largest fraction of the electorate. The number intending to use their vote as shield against their enemies is, however, unlikely to be significantly smaller than that of the weaponisers. Sadly, only a tiny minority of voters will be brave and/or principled enough to cast their votes positively in 2023. This is not going to be a happy election.

It was never going to be easy for Labour to live up to the hopes and encouragement of the voters in 2020. Not since the joyful election of 1972 made Norman Kirk New Zealand’s twenty-ninth prime minister, and gave him a whopping parliamentary majority of 23 seats, had so many Kiwis used their votes constructively as a tool. Not only were their ballots deployed as an enormous “Thank you, Jacinda!”, but many were also given to Labour as a way of facilitating the “transformation” which its leader had promised, but which Covid-19 had interrupted so dramatically.

Tragically, the Labour cabinet, caucus, and party organisation proved unequal to the challenge of using the tools which an astonishing 50.01 percent of the voting public had given them. Something strange and sinister appeared to overtake Jacinda Ardern, darkening her sunny political disposition. Her Cabinet was no help, and neither was her caucus. It was almost as if they were annoyed and/or affronted by the tools thrust into their hands. It was for them to set the agenda, not 1,443,545 presumptuous voters.

All of Labour’s team had failed to read the events of 2017-20 correctly. Most especially, they had failed to grasp that the success of their Covid response was based almost entirely on the state’s decisive intervention on behalf of the “Team of Five Million”. Those aligned to the ideologies of the Right knew exactly what they were looking at as the government seized control of the pandemic response. That’s why they were so furious. Allow the voters to see what a mobilised state could do for them and, inevitably, they would want more.

Painful though it may be to acknowledge, Labour’s ministers were as ill-disposed to keeping the state’s shoulder to the wheel as the Right. Rather than being inspired by the mass support for their Prime Minister and Party, they seemed terrified of it. Rhetoric was one thing, reality another. On the re-elected government’s agenda their was just one item: getting everything back to normal as quickly as possible.

In politics, executing such an unheralded handbrake-turn will always exact a high psychological price, and the Ardern-led government proved no exception. Working against the expectations of her supporters changed “Jacinda” – and not in a good way.

But, the political price incurred by Labour’s refusal to keep on moving forward was much, much higher. Hopes raised, and then dashed, will swiftly curdle into a witches’ brew of disappointment and fury. When next they enter the polling-booths, those who believe themselves betrayed by “Jabcinda” will wield their ballot papers like a butcher’s knife.

In doing so they will add their numbers to the roughly one-third of the electorate who have always wielded their votes as weapons against those who would upend what they still believe to be the natural order of things.

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At the core of this army of nay-sayers are the inhabitants of rural and provincial New Zealand. These “Heartlanders” have always looked upon the cities as sinks of iniquity and havens for the undeserving poor. Every three years, National and Act supporters grind their teeth in fury as impoverished citizens, many of them brown, turn out in support of Labour’s redistributive policies – using their votes as shields against the threatening depredations of the Right.

In uneasy alliance with the Heartlanders are the wealthy citizens of the big cities. Although they live, safely sequestered from the poor and the brown, in the leafiest suburbs of the cities, it is more difficult for these citizens to weaponise their votes in the manner of the farmers and their small-town friends.

The people who work in their factories and warehouses, clean their offices, serve in their shops and fast-food joints, and build the nation’s infrastructure for them to make profits out of are, after all, people they see every day. Somewhere in the recesses of their social consciousness, they understand that the working-class is something their own class cannot do without. When things are going well, they may even be persuaded to help the workers. When things start going badly, however, or when – God rot them! – their employees start joining unions and taking their destiny into their own hands, that’s when the wealthy turn their ballot papers into pistols and start shooting.

It is the working-class voters who, most of all, yearn to use their votes in the way their grandparents and great-grandparents did, as tools to build a better world. Every three years they hope-against-hope that Labour will ask them to create something worth having with their votes, but election-after-election they are disappointed. Reluctantly, and without enthusiasm, they lift the protective shield of the franchise against the worst the Right can offer – keeping Labour viable solely out of fear of meeting something worse.

Labour, as the lesser of two evils, remains the workers’ choice. Even if, in 2023, it no longer represents the working people who joined its ranks in 1923. Labour, now, is the party of the people who teach the working-class; who take care of it when its sick; who keep it afloat when jobs are scarce and puts its worst casualties up in hotels when they have nowhere else to go. They’re the people who, when the kids of the working-class start breaking bad, defend them in court, write reports about them, give them counselling, and mange them when they’re released from prison. There are tens-of-thousands of these people: not quite bosses, but not quite workers either. The American sociologists, John and Barbara Ehrenreich, called them the “Professional and Managerial Class” – and they have made the labour and social-democratic parties of the world their own.

The problem with this intermediate class is that its top two priorities are: to preserve the institutions that employ it; and, to keep the power relationships within those institutions from changing in ways that threaten their status. These essentially conservative priorities make the Professional and Managerial Class extremely difficult to like. They may talk the talk of “progressive politics”, but they are far too risk averse to walk it. Indeed, they have become the living proof of the American socialist journalist, Upton Sinclair’s, famous quip: “It is very hard to make a man understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

In this election, the National Party has its knives out for the professionals and managers of the public service, so no one should be surprised to see them voting defensively for what is, now, their own party. Labour’s problem, however, is that it has given far too many New Zealanders far too many good reasons for wanting to punish it.

Because, when all is said and done, Labour was the party which, in 2020, led half the country to the mountain-top, only to decide that if the promised land had no need of bosses, then it might also have no need for managers and professionals like themselves. Daunted by this terrifying prospect, they opted to proceed no further.

But you cannot show people the gates of heaven, and then turn around and go home. Not when there’s another election in three years’ time. Not when your party has ended up giving the New Zealand electorate so little to defend, and so much to punish.

67 COMMENTS

    • @ nathan. As I’ve come to understand about you, you’re a beacon of devious stupidity but don’t be sad, you’re not alone here.
      Labour, like national, like the greens, like nz first, like @ maori party etc are now all neo-liberal.
      That means that our politics is about money first and who cares about what comes in second. Of course, the question is eternal, who’s money is it?
      AO/NZ is a rich, lucky few islands which grew towns and cities out of wool and meat etc once exported. Then,
      in came the rot of greed marketed by a cunning few morons educated beyond their intelligence who furnished their Auckland offices to manage the flood of money that came into AO/NZ and straight into their pockets. Aye boys?
      The biggest problem The Boys have now is keeping a lid on their rackets, scams, swindles and lies.
      The National party is the problem. The crux of the matter, so to speak. They’re the original liars. They would have undoubtedly been behind the destruction of our Farmers Union movement allowing a national party to emerge, something like a gleeful maggot not daring to believe its luck as it wriggled out of the pussy sore on the farmers arse. They’d have been behind the rise of the useless, thus dangerous, federated farmers. A weak knee’d brigade of tea sippers and biscuit nibblers. They, national, would have sent in an eager little pig’ farmer’ roger into Labour as a two term finance minister who came out with the family silver. 14 multi-billionaires. 3118 multi-millionaires each with a personal fortune in excess of $50 million and the hit-squad-mafia that’s four foreign owned banks manipulating our economy while handing themselves $180.00 a *second 24/7/365 in nett profits.
      The only voters who might vote for national at this point are those who can’t read, can’t write and who can’t think, hear or see.
      * My wee comment above just cost us about $216,000 after tax to the now foreign owned banks. You must have seen that easy coin, aye boys?
      Now. Lets think about those hungry kiwi kids with their families living in cars again? Why are our electricity bills more like a mortgage payment?
      It’s on Labour to fix the carnage national and now its infectious rogernomic disease are wanting to perpetuate. Aye boys?

  1. “Lesser of two evils” is a too sophisticated concept for many revenge voters. But at least those that want to vote FOR something have Green and TPM to support, both of which have excellent policy for working class people.

    Let’s not forget the alienated, excluded and conscious non voters. With renter numbers ever growing, transience and the degradation of NZ Post services, how many people do not receive their orange graphic Electoral Commission envelopes? Also the unpublished roll is not publicised, you have to dig through the www site. The unpublished roll helps to allow people (debtors, women and those just wanting some privacy) to vote unharrassed. Non voters diminish our democracy.

    NZ Labour’s Caucus queered the pitch at every opportunity to avoid moving on tax, social policy such as Free Dental or reigning in the banks, oil industry and supermarket duopoly–they talked about these things yes–but did not act meaningfully.

    Labour made hundreds of incremental reforms, some very useful for working class people like minimum wage and bus driver, Nurses and teachers wages etc. If you want to know what the others are…just check out what Natzos and Act have stated they will remove or abolish–it is quite a list. Some revenge voters are in for a good walloping in their daily and family lives and at work, and they do not seem even dimly aware of it.

    TDB in the comments section now appears to have more Torys who have slipped their collars from Kiwiblog than lefties. Which is rather a mark on those optimistic souls that launched The Daily Blog all those years ago. One line taunts largely replacing thoughtful debate and argument.

    The best medicine for NActFirst is to defeat them by all means possible on October 14 despite the difficulties.
    Labour is half responsible for this situation I estimate, and the “dark kiwis and fruitcakes” for a quarter and Finance Capital, Capital and the Natzos a quarter with their 8 mill campaign funds donated by the boss class.

    Whatever the result the job is to build a new political movement (not party) leading up to 2026. If Māori rights and seats and Te Tiriti are attacked by Act in Govt it will all be on–mark my words!

    • Thing is with the left, it’s basically a variant of the idea behind the Gish Gallop. If they keep asking for “cites” of every little trivial thing, the discussion becomes bogged down because of the time and effort required. The actual discussion becomes buried under arguments over trivial comments and attempts to repeatedly prove well known facts, assuming that the other side doesn’t just give up and leave because it’s such a pain.

      And if the other side of the argument doens’t go along with their game (or even just gives up and leaves) they just call in the moderators to infract their opponents into silence for “not providing a cite.”

    • Ahhh Tiger, still moaning that a ‘left’ blog allows non lefties to post.
      Your still in denial about free speech, you want your blog to be an echo chamber, all agreeing and singing from same leftie song sheet, but as you have noticed even lefties are fucked off with the golden chance, never happen again a one party majority, for real change wasted over last 3 years!
      Go moan at the The Standard and have Weka and Micky Savage moderate you, you will be safe as though, the old bitter socialist that you are.

        • It’s not hard putting you in a corner neither silently looking over your shoulder whispering if I keep quite he’ll leave but your not like me. We not the same.

      • You can pull your head in too–not one tory troll has addressed my comments! It is the pathetic level of contribution that is the issue.

        A principled right winger that believes in their cause and can put up an argument to justify it is no worry. It is the intellectual minis that struggle to write more than one sentence about anything that are a concern with TDB.

        Echo Chambers…ahem…Kiwiblog…the simpering Farrars very own little S–bend…

  2. Perhaps the Labour Party’s values became those of the professional paternalists of the PMC – that officials and ministers know what’s best for everyone, and power should flow to the center. That ordinary people need to be guided and if necessary, forced to change.

    That approach to governing is not attractive to people outside the public service or activists.

    • Think the approach you described is right Ada. I feel patronising and judgmental is generally right – but to receive good responses, we need things explained for understanding, and be listening and thinking and querying about things suggested, methods and outcomes, and alternatives which for instance, might cost more. Sometimes dearer yields better outcomes etc.

      Not automatic dismissal, eg antivaxxers getting information from sources open to question. It’s not sensible to just distrust officials and instead trusting persuasive, charismatic or agitated people.

  3. Labour is the party of the working class? This is a joke, right? Just like the US Democrat Party, the institutional Left represented in political parties such as Labour (and their equivalents across the West) is a very different beast than the pro-workers protest movement it sprang from. Labour (And US Democrats) are the party for the PMC, the woke, and everyone else who loves to tell the workers how to think and live in the total conviction that they know best and the workers will be better off following their dictates. At a high price in costs, compliance issues, etc, of course.

  4. Great essay Chris, but you didn’t mention the shear incompetency of the current Executive, whom didn’t posses any of the skills required to implement the lofty promises made…

    • I don’t think their level of incompetence is very relevant given they didn’t actually want to do anything substantial. The Labour caucus (which worked hard to undermine David Cunliffe remember) is the last line of defense for neoliberalism, they would rather lose the election that do anything to change the economic settings – which is precisely what they seem to be doing at the moment

  5. Class wars again Chris…so last century.

    Having started age 15 with nothing as a cleaner & factory worker & having been poor more than once over the decades as well as apparently in the 1%, I suggest that “casting a vote positively in 2023” means ensuring the Labour party are wiped out for at least a decade.

    And I voted for them since Kirk with only 2 exceptions.

    • It is a class war, no matter how much the elitists waylay us into thinking otherwise. Neoliberalism did not come out of some Right or Left think tank. It is a big money concoction. The UN, the WHO, the IPCC, the WEF, the BIS and on and on I could go, big money influenced organizations that greatly influence policy throughout the West. There is no equivalent to any of these, serving solely the interests of the people, to be found in the political sphere. It is an us v them world and they are crushing it, as the trillions that went to them during the Covid years, alone, highlight all too well.

  6. Spot on Chris and expanding on your analysis. It’s not the workers who will vote Labour anyway that are labours’ problem, but their disregard of small business. When Labour started to win the majority of city seats it was benefiting from the small businesses that were swept along for the ride. Someone might tell me exactly when but the power of the rural vote, which had been largely National was nullified by the more populated city areas. The power of the farmer had gone and Labour was loving it. I believe Labour have ignored and underestimated the small businesses that missed out during Covid, and have been ram raided and been put under pressure by high fuel and supply chain costs. The big companies just put the costs back on the consumer but small businesses can’t. Many of those businesses fell into line and went for Labours ‘better world for us all’ promises. Labour has kept on side with the cooperates because it believed thats where the money comes from, but that’s wrong and they have disregarded farming and small business at their peril. The worm is turning. I have some sympathy for Labour. Covid dealt them a rough hand and it cost plenty. Even if they had managed the finances better the cost of covid took huge amounts of money away from other needy areas and supply issues further put the brakes on other achievement’s, but National had the earthquakes so it’s never plain sailing. Labour are philosophically lost because their ‘not so transparent’ co governance agenda had them take their eye off the real issues, maintaining health education and social fairness.

  7. PM Ardern’s sunny disposition, smiling, when she agreed that she was implementing the “ two-tier society”, with echoes of the WEF, did it for me.

  8. Labour has gone from team of 5 million to Team Woke, which includes a small subset of Woke white virtue signallers making a fortune from the government hand outs, woke Maori, Pacific Islanders, supporting migrants who get here under false paperwork and supporting exploiter migrant employers and ‘charities’ and private social services, making a fortune from immigration scams.

    When you have a migrant ‘exploitation’ visa ready to go at immigration but can’t be bothered funding checking ‘accredited’ employers, that shows the green light from government to allow knowingly false immigration scams to keep operating – all of whom need housing and funding as they do not have any work which was the requirement of their visa. Go woke, to go broke. (The country that is, not the vast amounts of wokies in their new range rovers, $40k parties and taxpayer paid endless cultural events, living the high life).

    The idea of cheap labour is far more of a priority for Labour and Greens than bothering about protecting communities from any Tom, Dick or Harry, from coming to NZ, and creating victims who will probably never recover from the violence that increasingly seem attracted to NZ shores.

    AKA Labour all over helping the 50+ migrants who were found to be illegally here and paying $20k for the ghost jobs, (they are treated like victims unlike the NZ citizens who get scammed by mostly foreign scammers while living her in bank and endless scams), but no denouncing of the rape of an 11yo from a seasonal worker. Was there the Labour press conference denouncing the disgusting violation and making sure that never happened again? Nope!

    Name suppression lapses for man who raped 11-year-old girl in Blenheim
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/marlborough-top-stories/132848236/name-suppression-lapses-for-man-who-raped-11yearold-girl-in-blenheim

    I guess that is the price of business here in NZ, now, where Labour more interested in non NZ citizens who are here illegally or violating NZ laws that are the priority to help and do press about, but any NZ innocent victims fall by the wayside.

    NZ is going down the gurgler full of people who need massive amounts of state funding especially justice costs. Sadly good people are leaving NZ, those that scam or are violent are staying, so it leaves an uncomfortable space for the honest people in NZ.

    That is why NZ has fallen out of love with Labour. Men attacking and raping kids, aged woman at speak up for woman protests and zero denouncing from our government (Greens seemingly on the side of the puncher and liquid thrower) and the dwindling right to free speech because people are enabled to be violent at protests now.

    Woke violence is an ok price it seems for Labour and Greens to keep people too frightened to speak out about their radical agenda that is going to change the way NZ is forever – especially from a safety, justice and wealth point of view.

    Teachers are not stuck off for sexual impropriety either – even when the teacher is being very dishonest in their testimony according to the tribunal.

    A teacher who called a teenage student outside of school hours, invited her overseas and made “inappropriate comments” to her will keep his registration to teach.
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-teacher-acted-inappropriately-with-female-student-swore-and-hit-others-with-ruler/GSTCJEJRMZFSNJFISGKBPV2JCA/

    Life in NZ is going backwards for woman and kids under labour! In spite of huge fanfare and funding, Maori kids are also going backwards and actually voting with their truant feet, not to be in woke schools, that some highly paid fuckwits in the ministry of misery with more radical, unproven agendas, have inflicted on the next generation of kids, who don’t know how to read and write proficiently and do basic maths anymore.

    NZ government seem to be more cult like in their desires of a new woke society, uneducated for a global economy, and most of it doesn’t include a team of 5 million currently living in NZ, but more about their new society they want to attract and create here.

    • Yes Save, that is all going on.
      The immigration visa scam is worse than its ever been. I’m an ex PTE adult ESOL teacher, with a ‘foriegn’ wife, so seen all that since 2000.
      On that $20k is cheap mates rates.
      $35k pretty standard, or more.

      Other Labour organised fountain of fortune?
      The community and social housing scam… Well industry may be a fairer word.
      No limits, no checks, no cure or rehab or solutions, just gouge as much tax out of the working family so it can be spent on next to useless and overstaffed organisations,…
      6 months out of a year off for funeral attendances one lady had (big PI family).
      Paid of course.

      Yep I contract to a couple of social housing providers now.

      Actually the good staff burn out after a year or two cus it’s so demoralising and obviously kind of pointless…

      • The price has gone done from $50,000 a visa for Chinese ghost jobs in NZ to only $20,000 for Indian ghost jobs now. Very little penalty means easy to do and costs are going down for fraud.

        I see the NZ officials are rushing to give them visas to stay so I guess that adds to the fraud recruitment drive, come to NZ, even if caught with ghost job, the government will give you a free real visa and pay for all your ongoing expenses like food and housing, directly or indirectly through charities.

        There is video link to testify from in India. That’s how criminals appear in NZ courts, from the prisons via video link, so there is no reason to keep them illegal migrants in NZ, apart from the NZ officials love virtue signalling illegal migrants, then wonder why NZ workers are so tired of it all.

        BTW, less jobs now as they tanked the economy, but keep the wages down with 100,000 people on ghost or low wages being procured to live here!

  9. If National or Labour get in I am moving to Australia. Jacinda doubled/trebled house prices, and JK’s spawn will do the same. Tragic betrayal of next generations.

  10. Again very well analyzed Mr. Trotter.

    The poorer class you will find is not solely made up of our brown brothers and sisters but an increasing number of other ethnicities including the pakeha poor who I guess because we are white its not assumed we are actual free market slaves subservient to the classes above but this kind of language is foreign to most Kiwis who don’t see it as what it is a class system that we have all voted to entrench by the actions and dishonesty of previous government administrations.

    ” Because, when all is said and done, Labour was the party which, in 2020, led half the country to the mountain-top, only to decide that if the promised land had no need of bosses, then it might also have no need for managers and professionals like themselves. Daunted by this terrifying prospect, they opted to proceed no further ”

    Had the pandemic not occurred was the promised transformation ever going to be delivered ? it seems that ” transformation ” LINO style was not what the people voting for it were going to get and if there was a desire to make some changes in their first term partnering with Winston was not going to deliver it as his influence and support was the only way to make it back into government that they otherwise would have been in opposition for a further three years.

    So it would seem the reality of the status quo is indeed entrenched and the poor as always will stay impoverished while the economy will only ever deliver for the two tier class private and corporate safeguarded by the two main parties.

    Should we all pack up and go home if we have one ?

  11. Labour will disappear into oblivion for decades. They’ve failed to deliver when they had a majority government and failed to deliver on all of what they’re campaigned on and promised.

    They’re dead meat.

    ‘Please Do Not Resuscitate!”

  12. “Allow the voters to see what a mobilised state could do for them and, inevitably, they would want more.”

    This is typical commie delusion. I don’t think those people whose livelihoods were destroyed or homes were lost would agree with this sentiment. In fact, I vaguely recall some of them taking a gentle walk through parliament grounds about this.

  13. I am reminded of a quote attributed to an Australian Labor Party Cabinet Minister named Frank Crean:
    “Labor used to be the cream of the working class, and now it is the scum of the middle class”.

    I may have the author wrong.

  14. Our covid response was the same as every other Western nation covid response, differing only in how we implemented the same measures. This is not unlike the Ukraine/Russia war, the West is largely in lockstep with each other. The real point of difference between recent elections is that we no longer have a charismatic leader that can hide the policy choices that are made. National were in the same boat when JK left. This to me, is a reflection of how little our politicians serve us relative to how much they serve themselves and big money interests.

  15. Although Chris makes valid comment it’s all a bit rich coming from the master of “make noises but don’t actually do anything to upset the applecart” advice.

  16. If National and ACT (possibly with NZ First) form the next government, it would be prudent to act swiftly to dispatch with and defunded the so called “professional managerial class” and “Main Stream Media” (MSM) respectively.

    Once a new government’s feet are under the table, machinations can quickly change. This is a concern given National’s go-along-to-get-along track record. For a party claiming the ability to “Get New Zealand Back on Track” – under Luxon their track record in opposition is one of cowardice and media placation.

    Any new government’s first hundred days would be well spent figuratively getting the ‘long knives’ out – utu:
    – Stop financing MSM
    – Stop advertising with MSM
    – Sell MSM
    As for the “professional managerial class”, a good question may be, “who is keeping their job?”.

    There are lots of people working tirelessly to change the government in favour of National and ACT. These people are NOT rusted onto any particular party and their hard work goes unremunerated while MSM receives hundreds-of-million of ‘creamy taxpayer’ dollars.

    If hubris strikes a new government early and they decide to spend their first 2 years trimming around the bureaucratic edges and leading the MSM on with continued subsidies, come election 2026 they’ll find no clandestine, unremunerated support and be turned on by a wild MSM they believed to be collared.

  17. With an unprecedented majority the Labour Government didn’t know what to do.
    They discovered not only they didn’t know what to do but also they didn’t know how to do it.
    They became a malaise treading water doing little or nothing.
    If they had pursued and delivered on their election promises they would still be the Government post October 14th.

    • Labour has been been treading water for yonks, also trading water! I thought that Labour was rather wet. And that’s possibly the reason why the educationists don’t bother to give children swimming lessons, you can get by with treading water. That’s interesting insight Bob. A good explanation for why nothing much is happening.

  18. More reasons why Labour and Greens have failed.

    After Tarrant and Samsudeen you would think the government would tighten up on character of people coming to NZ, but nope, every day a sad, depressing account of people who just arrive in NZ, and are then accused of killing or convicted of killing others – not to mention the highly unusual justice conditions around reporting the growing amount of unusual murders or attacks.

    Yanfei Bao homicide inquiry: Tingjun Cao identified as the man charged with murdering Christchurch real estate agent
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/revealed-man-accused-of-murdering-missing-christchurch-real-estate-agent-named/2HRPPSOH7NBDBLYNOA2SSYHTME/
    “The Herald earlier revealed the 52-year-old Bryndwr man had only been living in New Zealand for several months.”

    Lauren Dickason trial: Jury finds mum guilty of murdering her three children in majority verdict
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/lauren-dickason-trial-jury-cant-reach-a-unanimous-verdict-judge-confirms-he-will-take-majority-decision/VK4ZWQQHJJG2TFLSERAAOGFLTM/
    “Lauren Anne Dickason killed her two-year-old twins and their six-year-old sister in September 2021 at their home in Timaru, a city of 29,000 on the South Island, about a month after the family had migrated from South Africa.”

    Axe attack, witnesses not allowed to report their names to media. Transparent justice in NZ seems to be a distant memory with the vast amounts of criminal activity going on and nobody allowed to report who is doing it so that people can avoid the offenders.
    Albany axe attack: Name suppression for witnesses interviewed by media ‘unusual’
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300912803/albany-axe-attack-name-suppression-for-witnesses-interviewed-by-media-unusual

    Court interpreter costs soar amid threats to hobble thousands of cases
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/court-interpreter-costs-soar-amid-threats-to-hobble-thousands-of-cases/6HWSK7WVKQX3P664ZTSTANRGLA/

    No wonder the government has to borrow billions when NZ is increasingly becoming attractive to people who have serious problems – then there are the victims who have their lives changed forever or snuffed out by the criminals who seem to have the government and justices ear and no sense that anybody is concerned with checking new arrivals character and ability to support themselves mentally, physically or financially in NZ and what they are planning to do here.

    Every woke law they create seems to backfire to make it worse – ak new gun laws seem have increased the violence because they didn’t target gun criminals they targeted normal gun owners who had a reason to hold guns.

    Map shows Auckland shootings have spread across the city in 2022
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/128769097/map-shows-auckland-shootings-have-spread-across-the-city-in-2022

    Even if they take away guns then criminals will kill with knives, vehicles etc.

    The trick is to remove the criminals themselves from NZ society, either through not allowing them to enter NZ, deporting those who are from overseas who commit a crime here, including coming here under false pretences, or through detaining criminals in prison, and removing the infrastructure (drugs, trafficking and contraband) that seems to be increasing violent and illegal activities in NZ.

    10 years for killing someone in a woke prison, clearly not much of a disincentive plus up to 30% off for cultural reports. Penalty for violence is often 2 years prison or home detention – again not much of a deterrent. Need to deport ASAP so that the NZ prisons can be used to house NZ offenders not the worlds – nobody wants to spend taxes on prisons but then nobody wants to have their lives snuffed out because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time either.

    • What are you on? I don’t think the entire surrounding family of the SA mum had a clue she would kill her own children! How the f*ck would the government know that?

      • Don’t get excited about one example included in a group of them wheel. The problem remains. And if the NZ that shows up to new migrants isn’t the smiley face presented before paying their money to come here, that might have an influence on the crimes. Perhaps they feel mugrants! Better to stop enticing people here. Instead do something about our official mindless, immoral person-smog hanging over the country stopping us from having the decent society that I feel is desired by the great majority given a chance, and time to meet and devise what is to be changed and given up for the greater good.

        • Greywarbler being incredulous about the case in question is not excitement, it’s disbelief. It wasn’t said in defence of enticing people here at all. Two South African doctors and their kids moving here probably wouldn’t raise red flags in most countries. That said it’s probably a stretch at best to equate immigration with overall crime in NZ. Granted the vile bastard from Australia doesn’t support my argument but he is surety an outlier.

      • Dickenson was a big user of anti depressants for years, definitely a huge red flag that the person was not likely to cope well with migration and was likely to need ongoing mental health care in NZ.

        Not the only woman accused of killing their kids once arriving here.

        New Zealand bodies in suitcase: Woman arrested in S Korea over children’s deaths
        https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62910524

        Instead of stopping high risk people migrating to NZ, it seems to be acceptable to keep high risk people coming to NZ and to their families and others and keep them here after offending.

        The rise of teenagers coming to NZ, another problem as most teens are in no position to cope well – and should not be the age of student encouraged into NZ as clearly this is another rort and problem with criminal activity coming soon afterwards.

        Easy student visas yet another way to get easy residency into NZ for entire families, (Samsudeen who quit after studying 1 month, too bad for his many victims one of whom was nearly beheaded).

        Foreign students should have to wait until they are over 24 and doing PHD etc to qualify and it should be about the studying not the residency as too many fast food and retail ‘managers’ getting residency on low paid jobs, before moving onto government jobs that increasingly are making money on the side with corruption. https://thespinoff.co.nz/pop-culture/02-07-2019/the-extraordinary-story-of-love-brar-the-fraudster-who-became-a-pop-star

        Indian fraudster allowed to stay in NZ on ‘humanitarian grounds’
        https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118950290/indian-fraudster-allowed-to-stay-in-nz-on-humanitarian-grounds

        People of good character not a requirement anymore in NZ to live here.

  19. Let’s get horny!
    What is the purpose of the horn in the Song of Roland?
    Roland blows his olifant (ivory hunting horn) to summon help holding his sword Durendal while mounted on his horse Veillantif with Roland’s Breach in the background in the midst the Battle of Roncevaux The death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux, illuminated c. 1455–1460 by Jean Fouquet.
    Song of Roland – Wikipedia
    Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Song_of_Roland

    …in a way, Roland may be considered a true hero, because of his nobility and chivalry. He proves to be a somewhat honorable warrior and a very charismatic person. He is also adored by the public for his treatment of the common people, is seen as a hero in their eyes, and in the eyes of the author.13 Āku 2021
    The Song of Roland. Is Roland a True Hero? | Free Essay Example
    studycorgi.com https://studycorgi.com › the-song-of-roland-is-roland-a-t.

    Have we a Roland in our midst? If so, if he/she has the intellectual power or can corral enough with known similar sages, to stand against the Odious Others, we all beg him to come out and lead the way to the Hill in Wellington this election. I see many who have mind strength but it is all applied to gaining wealth through property etc. We must find strength in our combined efforts in both physical terms and principles.

  20. The amount of labour voters I come across in everyday ( golf club, bowls club, and work ) life long labour.. now voting NZFirst is a first for me … I’m struggling to find anyone voting for them.

    • Ah … but come the day? Old allegiances are difficult to sever. Unless, it is as CT calls it. A bit like a furious father disowning his only son and cutting him out of the inheritence. It does happen. But imv it’s the swing voters who’ll decide this election – as they did the last. Not the angry life time Labour voters. And not so decisive as a blue tsunami. As you say Kirk28.

  21. ” Labour, as the lesser of two evils, remains the workers’ choice. Even if, in 2023, it no longer represents the working people who joined its ranks in 1923 ”

    And the following is an example of their many failures where it matters to protecting working people.

    ” The bill would make it a criminal offence for employers to steal from their workers (for example, by intentionally failing to pay them, or demanding they work extra hours unpaid). But as I noted when it was drawn, Labour has flubbed this, with a special, weak penalty, rather than just applying the existing law of theft by person in special relationship ”

    https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2023/09/submit.html

  22. Most days we sit on the back porch and drink our benefit.We are the forgotten class.Labour has topped us up and has no plan or measures for us to do anything different.

  23. Labour’s failings with 50.1 shine a light on the obstacles to real change in NZ.
    They are just elected as laypeople project managers. They are reliant on “experts” and bureaucrats to formulate and deliver results.
    However this establishment is traditionalist and captured by its own self-interest, which it sees in following the lead of its global influencers of corporates funders, thinktanks and their peers – other Western governments captured in this mesh.
    When the risk/choice is between doing nothing or doing something that their PMC and “experts” tell them will fail, or will make fail – there is not difference. Safer to go with tiny wins the permanent state lets them have, that satisfy the optics, and keep the architecture o systematic owner-class exploitation intact.

    • the permanent state. depressing isn’t it. them and the hoarders will have us all sleeping in electric cars having electric dreams.

  24. “Every three years, National and Act supporters grind their teeth in fury as impoverished citizens, many of them brown, turn out in support of Labour’s redistributive policies – using their votes as shields against the threatening depredations of the Right.”

    Non-support of redistributive policies is really an example of Depredation of the Right?

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