Pōti ahau – I voted (2026)

Today I voted in New Zealand’s General Election, and that’s because I now always vote in the Advance Voting period, which is the two weeks before Election Day (Saturday, November 7). This year I also voted at Te Awa, the mall at The Base Shopping Centre, around ten minutes from my house. As always everything went smoothly, but this year things are different.

For the first time in some 40 years, people were no longer able to register and vote in the two-week Advance Voting period (the current government changed the law for some bizarre reason). The NZ Elections people are concerned that too many people won’t have heard the message (most of the advertising I saw was on traditional broadcast media…) and may turn up, anyway, and they’re concerned a few of those people might cause trouble. So, some voting places have a security guard stationed there (mine did; people from 4 or 5 different electorates from across the region can vote there).

Just today, I saw a news report today that Election Workers have been told that if one of these affected people turns up and is too insistent, they should allow them to vote, even though it won’t be counted. All of which means Election Workers may be under added stress this year, so I said to the woman who gave me my ballot, “Thank you for doing this work. It’s so important!” She seemed a bit surprised, but thanked me. I guess that means they don’t hear that very often.

On the plus side, this was the first year they emailed EasyVote cards to registered voters (they all used to be sent by post). The cards make it very easy and fast for Election Workers to find our names in the printed Electoral Roll. They then ask us to state our name, but we’re not required to show any identification. All up, I was done in less than 10 minutes.

The photo above, and the one I shared for my voting day in 2023, both have me looking a bit tense, I think. That’s because I always feel odd taking a selfie in such a public place, and also because I’m actually staring at the screen to make sure no identifiable person can be seen.

And, to finish the story, I of course voted to change the government: Two Ticks Labour. Again.

Previous posts about me voting:

Pōti ahau – I voted (2023)
Pōti ahau – I voted (2020)
The voting is done (2017)
I love voting My 2014 post about my first Early Voting experience
How I will vote – My general post about the 2011 election
The New Zealand election – My post about the 2008 General Election, the first after I started this blog.

'Tis the (triennial) season

Election season has once again returned to New Zealand. Once every three years the beautiful New Zealand landscape is polluted with election hoardings (signs), campaign volunteers scurry from door to door to try and win over voters, and, especially, to motivate the supporters of their party and/or candidate to actually vote, and all too soon, banal ads will be all over TV—for those who watch broadcast TV or ad-supported streaming services, anyway.

While political junkies may enjoy all that, a great many ordinary New Zealanders can’t stand it. Personally, I’m somewhere between those two positions. I guess that makes me “discerning”.

New Zealand’s General Election is, technically, on Saturday, November 7, with voting places open from 9am to 7pm. I say “technically” because Advance Voting begins on October 26, so November 7 is actuality the final day to vote. Affecting all that, the current government changed the rules for registering: The last date to register is October 25, where in previous years eligible voters could register and vote up to and including Election Day. In 2020, around 80,000 people enrolled or updated their details on Election Day. In 2023, though, there were 600,000 enrolments or updates after writ day (when the voter rolls are printed), including 450,000 who during the voting period leading up to election day, and 110,000 voted on election day itself.

The surge in registrations/updates in 2023 is what led the current government to change the rules. They argued that the large numbers would grow, and that would add more delay the result being announced. My honest reaction to that was, “so what?!” I believe it’s government’s duty to make it as easy as possible to enrol to vote and then to actually vote. If that takes extra time, it takes extra time. Relax, and let the people have their say. But, then, conservative politicians, it seems. seldom agree with me on all that

Several Members of Parliament in the current coalition expressed disdain for voters who didn’t enrol or update their details until after writ day, implying they were basically just lazy. A large percentage of the late enrollers are usually in the 18-24 age bracket, a group with historically low enrolment and voting rates, often because they can be more transient than older folks (because, for example, they’re university students). The changes this year could disenfranchise a large percentage of those people, and it’s perhaps cynical to point out that 18-24 voters are more likely to vote for parties on the Left, and not for any of the parties in the current ruling coalition. It may be cynical to think that was a factor in the government’s decision, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also true. Or not. The larger point is that whatever the current government’s motivation, it will disenfranchise younger voters and make it harder for large numbers to register in time.

This year, I saw election hoardings going up around Kirikiriroa-Hamilton much earlier than I thought was legal, and then found out for the first time that the city’s bylaws allow signs to go up much earlier than in other parts of the country. I had no idea that was the case.

In the first couple weeks, by far the most signs I saw were for the NZ Labour Party and its candidates, with signs for the NZ National Party going up shortly afterward. The two parties still make up the vast majority of signs I’ve seen in my travels around the city (mostly within my own electorate). I don’t recall seeing this large amount of Labour signs in 2020 or 2023, but National’s presence seems similar to me.

During my first General Election in Hamilton, 2020, I don’t think we got many campaign pamphlets dropped in our letter boxes. There were some in 2023, especially from National. This year, some had materials for National had already been left, and then the week after I got a second one for National’s candidate, I got my very first pamphlet from Labour (both in photo above). I was glad to see the competition.

Last weekend, a couple lads came to my door, one wearing a National Party t-shirt. They were door knocking, as it’s usually called, for their party’s candidate. I didn’t want to waste their time, so I raised my hand as if to stop him, and much to my surprise, the guy speaking started to wind up to leave, and, after I said something like, “I’m 100% Labour,” I then added, “you guys are the first election volunteers I’ve ever seen in this neighbourhood, so well done!” I didn’t want them to think I hated them: The fact I wouldn’t vote for their party or candidate doesn’t mean I have anything against them personally. In fact, I admire people who do that, partisanship aside, because it’s something I can’t do.

The dissolution of Parliament is on October 1, and the current government becomes a caretaker government until after the final election results are declared and they either form a new coalition government, or else they become the Opposition to the new Centre-Left government. But that’s a tale for late November or early December. Naturally, I intend to talk about that then.

Overall, the fact that our neighbourhood is getting a bit more attention from the politicians means we’re a real neighbourhood now. I’m mostly joking about that, of course, because with all the development going on around us, we’ll soon be like every other part of the city, and I think that’ll be a good thing—or maybe that should say I hope it’s a good thing? Time will tell how that tale turns out, too.

To be abundantly clear, I am not, and don’t pretend to be, neutral or non-partisan. I support the New Zealand Labour Party, and am a member of the party, though I have absolutely no role or position whatsoever. I get the exact same information emails from the party as any other member or supporter gets, and don’t ever get “insider” information. All of which means that while I’m certainly partisan, all my opinions on NZ politics and elections are entirely my own sincerely held beliefs and opinions. Just so we’re clear.

Fueling the rising costs for everyone

Fuel prices are rising throughout the world due to Tr*mp’s war against Iran, and obviously New Zealand’s fuel prices are rising fast, too. A couple days ago, an economist predicted that petrol prices could pass $4 per litre (roughly US$8.81 per US gallon). I think our prices will probably reach that point in maybe a week.

Here's why I say that: Late yesterday afternoon, I used the Gaspy App to look at prices at around 50 petrol stations within a relatively short drive from my house. The cheapest price for 91 was $2.93 per litre (three stations), and the highest price was $3.26 per litre. This evening, the cheapest price was $3.14 per litre (one station), and the highest price was $3.40—that’s around 24 hours later. It will keep rising.

Despite being late to take the situation seriously, the current NZ government is starting to talk about “worst case scenario” solutions. They claim NZ has seven weeks of fuel supply, counting both what’s here and what’s on the way, but experts in the industry estimate it’s actually around five weeks. One specific—and big—problem is that around 47% of NZ’s refined fuel comes from Korea, and they’ve talked about suspending exports, and if they do, this situation could get serious fast.

The government’s first step will be to work with partner countries overseas to try to find alternative sources of fuel, and they’re talking about temporarily relaxing fuel standards (I think, but don’t know, that they mean things like allowing higher levels of Sulfur in diesel). They also are working on a series of escalating restrictions on sales (to prioritise essential users, like emergency services and truckers shipping food to supermarkets) that they could use, if that becomes necessary—along with security guards at petrol stations.

I’m extremely lucky in that I don’t need to drive much or far, so this shouldn’t affect me for a while. Sales restrictions, if they happen, would obviously affect me, too, but, like everyone else, rising prices will increasingly mean I won’t drive anywhere unless I have to.

However, we'll all share the pain of fast-rising fuel prices because EVERYTHING we need to buy will become more expensive, including groceries, which are already at too-high prices—and, of course, farmers need fuel to grow and harvest our food (plus fertiliser may be hard to obtain). We’ve also been warned that because of all the uncertainties, there could be fuel surcharges added to anything delivered directly to us. Could? Make that there will be.

Related to that, I realised recently that this situation could mean that the guy who mows my front lawn may raise his prices. However, he recently cut back to mowing every other week, so even if he raises his prices, I should still be paying less per month than when he was mowing weekly. Like I said, I’m lucky.

No one knows how this will play out, or when the war will end. It certainly doesn’t help that the USA has a government that doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing, and the Republican politicians clearly have no idea whatsoever how to bring their war to an end. So, things right now are serious and getting worse, but they're not yet dire—emphasis on yet.

New Zealand is as vulnerable as any other country, and our own “Coalition of Chaos” government hasn’t exactly been inspiring confidence that they know what to do. Even so, I’m not willing to jump on the panic wagon about all this. First, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the cause of all this turmoil. All I can do is manage what’s within my control, and I’m definitely doing that.

But, seriously, isn’t it about time we finally got to have some precedented times?!!!

Forgetting the weekday because of a good focus

This is the time of year when I can’t remember what day of the week it is. That’ll happen when there are two weeks in a row that each have two public holidays. This speaks volumes about how different life in New Zealand is from life in the land of my birth, but many countries have it far better than folks in the USA have it. It doesn’t have to be that way for the US, and some want to take it away from New Zealanders—though, yeah, nah, that’s not going to happen.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day (December 25 and 26) are both public holidays, and the following week January 1 and 2 are also both public holidays. There’s also a “trading ban” on Christmas Day, which, despite werdly complicated rules and exceptions, generally means most businesses must close on that day. The other three are ordinary public holidays, but in New Zealand that actually means something.

Public holidays are sometimes called “statutory holidays” (or “stat day” for short) because they’re specifically named in law and have specific regulations. For example, most full-time workers who are required to work on a public holiday will receive 1.5 times their normal hourly pay, and they’ll be entitled to another day off in lieu (as it’s called) at a time the worker and employer agree to. In reality, it’s a bit more complicated than that, with some variations because of a worker’s specific circumstances, however, that’s the gist of it.

Another important thing for workers about the public holidays for Christmas Day and Boxing Day and January 1 and 2 is that if one or both days fall on a weekend, the public holidays are observed on the following Monday, or Monday and Tuesday if both fall on a weekend. For example, in 2026 Christmas Day falls on a Friday, and Boxing Day on Saturday, so the Boxing Day public holiday for workers will be on Monday, December 28.

This same thing repeats the following week for 2027 New Year’s Day and the day after. So, most Kiwis get two four-day weekends in a row—not every year, but many years—which is supremely awesome, and it allows many folks to have a two week break from work while only using maybe six annual leave days (“vacation days” in Americanese) instead of ten. Full-time workers in New Zealand are generally entitled to 20 annual leave days per year, plus 12 paid days off for public holidays.

I mention all that, even though I have several times before, because it make a very important point: Workers’ rights to things like paid time off don’t have to rely on the graciousness or mercy of employers, and that governments can, and most do, enforce workers’ rights. American workers aren’t treated poorly compared to workers in most OECD countries because “it’s just the way it is” or because “government can’t change things”, but, rather, it’s because of weak or compromised politicians who refuse to do the right thing for working people, and instead do only the absolute bare minimum that won’t upset big corporations and oligarchs too much. They do only enough to prevent working people from using the power in their numbers to force change by electing politicians who are on the side of working people, and not consumed by doing the bidding of corporations and oligarchs.

Most politicians in US state and federal governments rely on campaign donations from corporations and oligarchs, directly or indirectly, and so, they vote to advance the interests of their financial benefactors and not the needs of ordinary working people. It’s said that “the love of money is the root of all evil”, but campaign contributions from corporations and the rich are particularly rich fertiliser for those roots, and the rotten fruit that grows is merely the logical result.

Money weakens democracy in nearly every country, and the love of money is certainly at the core of many Rightwing parties throughout the OECD, and that includes New Zealand. When conservatives are in power, we see attempts to restrict workers’ rights and to enrich corporations. But the centrist parties don’t push hard enough to do what ordinary working people want and need.

Most politicians spend most of their time telling ordinary citizens what they “can’t” have. What those things are will vary from place to place, but the tendency is pretty much universal. Politicians on both the Right and the Left do this, but there are difference: To the Right, nothing the people want is possible, but what corporations and oligarchs want always is. Centrist politicians do some things to help some ordinary people, but their difference from the Right is mainly one of degree, and perhaps a bit more humanity. Maybe this will soon change.

The mission of politicians—the people’s representatives—is to do one thing: Deliver what the people want. If something is difficult to achieve, then it’s their job to work how to deliver what the people want, and if there really are genuine trade-offs, then they must be open and honest with the people so they can weigh in on what should be priorities and what really can be deferred. In other words, politicians must do the work their bosses—voters—elected them to do. If they can’t or won’t to what voters want, they need to get out of the way.

I’ve seen signs that things are beginning to change in some countries, and that people are beginning to demand that their elected representatives do what the people want. This is the possible antidote to many governments sole focus on the needs of corporations and oligarchs. Ordinary people far outnumber the oligarchs, and only destruction of democracy can slow this gradual march toward more just societies—which means, it’s still possible for the oligarchs to kill off the infant people’s movement.

In the meantime, people like me who live in countries that respect workers will continue to sometimes get confused this time of year about what day of the week it is because of the time off that workers get at this time of year. But countries like the USA can still catch up. It’s time they did.

Senseless census?

The current New Zealand government announced recently that it’s scrapping New Zealand’s five-yearly census. The government says it’s doing this because of rising costs, which, it thinks, can’t be justified when much of the information the census surveys can be extracted from data collected from various government agencies. Are they right? Or will their focus on cost alone cost New Zealanders in other ways?

In announcing the change, Statistics Minister Shane Reti described the change as being a”sharpened focus on quality economic, population stats”. Beginning in 2030, the new system will end the traditional nationwide census and will adopt a new approach “using administrative data, supported by a smaller annual survey and targeted data collection.” Reti claimed this “will save time and money while delivering more timely insights into New Zealand’s population,” but will it really? I think they’re overlooking the importance of what isn’t collected by anything except the census.

The government plans to use what’s called “administrative data”, which is basically statistics collected by various government agencies every day, things like tax records, education enrolments, health data, and other government data. in fact, Stats NZ uses administrative data for reports between censuses. Also, some of that sort of data is NOT collected by the current census, and so, it’s true that routinely including administrative data will give Parliament and the government of the day a better idea of the state of the country—or, at least, programmes central government manages.

However, the census also collects data no one esle does, including sociological and cultural data, such as, languages spoken in the home, religious affiliation and non-affiliation, and, most recently, sexual orientation and gender identity. Administrative data may sometimes hint at such data, but there’s no reason for them to collect it. To be blunt, it’s not merely about taxation or performance of the economy, so government agencies don’t need, and so, don’t collect such data. This kind of data provides a fuller picture of who, exactly, New Zealanders are, things beyond empoyment, tax, student debt, or any other things government departments collect information on.

Censuses provide the data that helps elected governments to work out not just where government spending is needed, but also WHY the money needs to be spent. Census data also gives local government insights into where new parks, public libraries, and various local improvements will be needed. Basically, getting the fullest, most complete picture of the people helps elected representatives to better represent the people who put them in power, as well as all the people who didn’t for whatever reason, like, for example, because they’re under 18.

Continuing the financial argument, Reti said, “Relying solely on a nationwide census day is no longer financially viable. In 2013, the census cost $104 million. In 2023, costs had risen astronomically to $325 million and the next was expected to come in at $400 million over five years [emphasis added]. I have absolutely no idea what that “over five years” thing means, and neither the press release nor media coverage have explained it—at all. Speaking of unexplained things, the announcement says that the census will end in 2030, but the next census was due to be in 2028—two years before the announced end of the census, so what’s going on? Are we not doing the 2028 census? If not, why isn’t the end date 2028 instead of 2030? The press release doesn’t say, but I saw a journalist’s comment (sadly, I didn’t bookmark it…) that we may have done our last census. Does the current government know what's up?

Still, despite Reti’s focus on cost alone, and even ignoring his weird, unexplained conflicting timeline, he was correct about one thing when he said, “successive censuses have been beset with issues or failed to meet expectations.” Absolutely true. It’s also absolutely true that we don’t know if the current government ever explored ways to improve the census rather than killing it off, because they don’t seem to have ever mentioned doing that, or having decided not to do that.

I have huge concerns about whether any of the data after the census ends will be complete, or even as useful. Stats NZ is the agency that currently conducts the census and will presumably collate the administrative data and the results from the “smaller annual survey and targeted data collection” the current government claims will fill in the missing data from the cancelled census. Will Stats NZ actually even be ABLE to get useful information about the needs of minority and vulnerable communities through the those planned targeted special surveys? Asking people who already mistrust government to do the census is a huge ask right now, but getting them to do a special survey most people don’t get asked to do sounds like it’s destined to fail. In fact, this non-compliance could make the “errors” in recent censuses seem very minor.

Conservative governments always look to cut costs, and so, services provided by government. In general, those who are obsessed with the cost of everything seldom understand the true value of anything. The current coalition government has the numbers to push through the required legislation, though if they lose the 2026 election, the new government could repeal the changes—or, not. That, too, is unknown territory.

To me, this issue isn’t merely about money, but also about the quality of the data, and I’m not convinced that what the current government is proposing with provide quality data that elected representatives in Parliament and local government alike need. As a middle ground, it seems to me that switching to a decennial census (like the USA has) could allow the collection of census data to periodically correct the data collected by other means, while still saving money. Maybe in time, as systems improve, the census wouldn’t be needed, but I’m not convinced that time is now.

Word nerd footnote: The formal term for a census conducted once every five years is to call it a “quinquennial census”. I can't remember ever hearing anyone using the term quinquennial, either for that or to refer to something that last five years (its other meaning). But I avoided using it in this post—until this footnote.

The non-birthday birthday holiday thing

Today was the first day of the work week for most New Zealanders, as it is every year at this time. That’s because the first Monday in June is the King’s Birthday public holiday, which means this past weekend was a three-day holiday weekend. It used to be the last public holiday until Labour Day at the end of October, but now we have Matariki (also known as “Māori New Year”) which comes between the two, and this year it will be on Friday, June 20

Technically, the holiday is actually the “Reigning Monarch’s Birthday” or some such (that’s what it was called in my various employment contracts), because it’s not their actual birthday. The late Queen of New Zealand, Elizabeth II, was actually born on April 21, and her successor and son, King Charles III, was born on November 14. I have a hunch that while most New Zealanders know that the first Monday in June is just a public holiday, I doubt all that many know when the monarch’s actual birthday is. For some unknown reason, I somehow memorised King Charles’ actual birthday, but I could never remember the exact birthday of our late queen, aside from the fact she was born in April. So, yay me? Yeah, I’ll go with that.

King’s Birthday is one of two pubic holidays on which honours are handed out (the other is New Year’s Day), but it’s a werid process. Technically, anyone can nominate someone (other than themselves) online. The nominations go to a special committee chaired by the Prime Minister of the day (currently the National Party’s Chris Luxon). This year, additional committee members include the leaders of the parties in Luxon’s coalition, Winston Peters of NZ First and David Seymour of Act. The other members of the committee are from all three parties in the coalition.

After the committee reviews the list (according to some sort of process), the prime minister makes a recommendation to the King of New Zealand, and he then approves the honours list, as the saying goes, “on the prime minister’s advice”. Put another way, it’s kind of a rubber stamp. Naturally, there are problems with this system.

First, and most obviously, it’s controlled by the government of the day. Traditional, National Party-led governments reward business people, and Labour Party-led governments tend to reward teachers and union/worker organisers. Both tend to reward community organisers, as well as folks in the arts, and sport, though ratios may vary between the two.

I always read through the entire list of folks getting an honour (Related: This year’s full list of King’s Birthday Honours), and I seldom recognise very many names. Whenever I raise an eyebrow at an honours list, it’s inevitably a National Party-led government that’s created it. This year was no different.

The one that jumped out at me was them honouring Ruth Richardson, a neoliberal’s neoliberal, who was Finance Minister from 1990 to 1993 in the Fourth National Government led by Jim Bolger as Prime Minister. She was the first female to hold the position, which absolutely is notable—or, it would be if she hadn’t been so absolutely awful. Darien Fenton, a former Labour Party Member of Parliament, summed it up well on her Facebook page:

Ruth Richardson did untold damage that our country wears til this day. But 30 years on, she is still boasting about it: "I have always worn those reforms that I championed as a badge of honour, and the restoration of New Zealand's fortunes made it worth it. So I guess this award thirty years down the track is a recognition of that work." Nicola Willis [the current National Party Finance Minister and Deputy Leader of her party] is following in her tradition.

Richarsons’s 1991 "Mother of all Budgets" drastically cut benefits to “encourage employment”, but it led to an explosion in income inequality and poverty, and general hardship for the poorest New Zealanders. It wasn’t until 2016 that there was a small effective increase under National, and then Labour largely restored pre-1991 funding levels 2020-21. Richardson’s policies were so toxic that National barely won re-election in 1993 (they had a one seat majority in those pre-MMP days), and she was fired from the Finance Minister role, so she decided to resign from Parliament rather than accept a different Cabinet position, thus forcing an expensive by-election on NZ taxpayers, which, in my opinion, is the ultimate “fuck you” from a selfish, arrogant, and narcissistic politician.

New Zealand still hasn’t fully recovered from the damage done by the 1991 Budget, nor from the neoliberal takeover of Labour before that which also caused huge damage to New Zealand. The architects of Labour’s awful neoliberal policies natually joined with Richardson to establish the expressly neoliberal Act Party, and neither they not Act have wavered from their war against working people in favour of the rich—leopards really don’t change their spots, apparently.

All of this just underscores why the honours process should never be under the control of the government of the day: Partisanship always gets in the way. I think that a ministerial committee (made up of non-political career ministry workers) should review all nominations and make recommendations to the government of the day that they can either accept or reject. Ideally, that should be it—the politicians shouldn’t be allowed to add strictly partisan nominees, but maybe they could be allowed to add a certain number (5?) of lower-level honours. In my opinion.

While I’m a huge fan of public holidays—especially because they matter in New Zealand—I’m like most New Zealanders in that, for me, the King’s Birthday public holiday is nothing more than a three-day holiday weekend. Honestly, I don’t even care about the Honours List, even when I think one includes people who shouldn’t be honoured. After all, people who have opposite political beliefs from mine probably think the same of lists put out by a Labour-led government. It is the way of things.

So, a three-day holiday weekend was had. Happy us!

Related: "King's Birthday Honours: Dai Henwood, Tim Southee and Jude Dobson among those recognised" – RNZ

A change of clowns

New Zealand’s 3-ring circus government had a major change today when the leader of the hard-rightwing Act Party, David Seymour, became Deputy Prime Minister (aka “DPM”), replacing Winston Peters, leader of the rightwing populist New Zealand First Party (Peters will remain Foreign Minister). On the surface, its not a big deal at all, but it may prove to be one for entirely partisan political reasons.

The job-share Deputy Prime Minister position (a description of the job that both Seymour and Peters loathe, which is ironic since they both say disparaging things about opponents that are far, far worse) was part of the two parties’ coalition agreement with the right-of-centre National Party, headed by current Prime Minister Chris Luxon. The role of Deputy Prime Minister exists so that someone is “in charge” when the Prime Minister is out of the country, at which time the DPM becomes acting prime minister. Because there were times over the past 18 months when both Luxon and Peters were out of the country, Seymour has been the acting PM a couple before. And that’s where the unimportance ends.

By taking the first half of the job-share role, Winston is free to start campaigning for next year’s General Election. He has never won re-election after serving in Government, but he clearly hopes that this will give him the distance to run against the very government he was part of. Interesting ploy from the wily Winston, but it’s by no means certain it’ll work. The election of "change” was 2023, and 2026 will be largely a reaction to the past three years of this Government.

I wrote about this circus arrangement back in 2023, and in that post I quoted TVNZ journalist John Campbell making the same point about Winston’s motivation for being DPM first. Today, 1News published a new piece about his interviews with Winston and David about the job-share change, and Winston confirmed the reason he went first. So… not so secret then. Clearly.

Seymour, on the other hand, apparently wanted to be the sole DPM because his party won more seats in Parliament than Winston’s did. Those of us who oppose this rightwing government have dreaded this job-share change because, of the two, Seymour is way more reprehensible. His “Treaty Priniciples Bill” was the most divisive—and racist—bill in decades, or even longer. It resulted in the largest-ever protest march on Parliament and an astounding 300,000 submissions to Parliament the VAST majority of which opposed the bill. The parliamentary select committee recommended that the bill be rejected, and Parliament did: It only got 11 votes, all from the Act Party’s own MPs—ALL other parties voted against it and former politicians from all over the spectrum denounced the bill.

Among other neoliberal things, Seymour is a proponent of “charter schools”, as he was in the past, and many of his opponents, including me, see it as his way of privatising education by stealth. He and his party are not friends of working people, though in a sort of backhanded compliment, they’ve also never pretended to be. Their policies promote the sort of far-right, neoliberal agenda that could never get through democratically (kind of like the current occupant of the USA’s White House’s “Project 2025” fascist agenda).

Seymour is openly hostile to the news media—often aggressively so (though one suspects it may be mainly performative…) but always in a dickheadish way. John Campbell talks about that, too. Seymour has ties to a far-right a foreign neoliberal network that worked behind the scenes to affect public policy in multiple countries. He dismisses concerns about his past, and denies any connection, even though his policy objectives align with the neoliberals’ priorities. The extent of his involvement in the far-right group and its influence on him, AND his prickly relationship with journalists, can be seen in an RNZ documentary in its “Mata Reports” series, titled “ACT: The Foreign Influences That Have Shaped David Seymour's Political Agenda” presented by veteran journalist Mihingarangi Forbes.

Seymour has a habit of making outrageous and confrontational statements that openly and strongly contradict official government policy, often to claim “credit” for his party. While some of that is purely performative, mainly for the benefit of the minority of New Zealanders who agree with him, he’s always nevertheless consistently promoting an unpopular hard-right political agenda, and he does so with a weird blend of attempted humour and aggressive bullying. It’s never pleasant to watch him perform for the cameras—but, to be clear, he really is very, very good at performing and has a productive social media team, which is why the very journalists he attacks always cover him and his antics.

The bottom line in all this is that for the majority of New Zealanders, Winston was (and is) bad, but Seymour is far worse. To be abundantly clear, I have never voted for Winston or Seymour’s parties, and I can’t conceive of any scenario whatsoever in which I would consider it for even a nanosecond. This is a truly “duh!” statement: As I’ve made abundantly clear over the past 18+ years of this blog, I am absolutely not a “conservative”, much less a hard-rightwinger. It is, in fact, my centre-left politics and values that make me reject both Winston and Seymour. It’s not personal, it’s political.

As difficult as the past 18 months have often been, the coming 18 months may be even worse. If they are, it’ll help ensure this current government is turfed out at the next election. That gives Seymour an incentive to behave himself in his job-share role. Can he do it? Dunno. But I doubt it.

Trendsetting declarations?

This is becoming a trend: Voters in countries in the Commonwealth are rejecting the USA’s titular president and his hard-right authoritarian politics. Will this spread? We can certainly hope so.

This past Saturday, Australians went to the polls in parliamentary elections, and the delivered a resounding defeat to the countries MAGA-aligned conservatives. Just as Canada recently did, the Australian conservative leader also lost his own seat in Parliament. Well done, Australia, well done.

Australia’s re-elected government is under the Australian Labor Party (ALP) headed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (his surname is pronounced “all-ban-EE-zee”). The leader of The Coalition was Peter Dutton who tried to use the US Republicans' culture war antics, along with a bizarre focus on expanding nuclear energy (critics suggested it was to promote uranium mining in Australia, and also to distract from conservatives’ fixation on coal, which is also mined in Australia).

The Albanese government wasn’t overwhelmingly popular late last year, then in January everything changed as the US regime bedded in. In the last couple weeks before the election, it looked like the ALP would be re-elected, but the polls were quite close, and it looked like maybe the best Albanese could hope for was to form a minority government (this happens when no party has an absolute majority in Parliament and is able to form government with the support of minor parties). In the end, the ALP increased its majority.

The conservative Liberal Party (which is in coalition with the largely rural National Party, and together they’re usually called “The Coalition”) was the target because of their rhetoric aping the US regime’s leader, leading to the ALP branding him “DOGE-y Dutton”. He wasn’t the only MAGA-aligned Australian, of course. The AP News article linked to above noted:

Trumpet of Patriots, a minor party inspired by Trump policies with an advertising budget funded by mining magnate Clive Palmer that eclipsed the major parties, attracted only 2% of the vote.

Once again, mining rears its head (many of Australia’s ultra rich are connected to mining). At any rate, it’s always pleasing to see oligarchs waste some of their obscene wealth in a failed campaign to buy an election, much as Elon failed to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. Seeing the oligarchs fail utterly is always satisfying to the those of us who love and embrace democracy.1

New Zealand’s next general election is next year, and we have two very different minor parties aligned with the US Republican regime: One is led by an octogenarian who apes the Republican leader’s culture war bullshit. His party is introducing a bill to declare there are only two genders, after campaigning in the election to require restaurants, bars, etc., to verify that the gender of patrons using matched the toilets the toilets they planned to use. How, precisely, business were to do that was never stated, leading to mockery about them requiring genital inspections.

The other hard-rightwing minor party is led by a much younger man who wants to implement the same far-right fascistic agenda being advocated by those working behind the scenes of the USA’s current regime, in part because that particular minor party leader was part of an international organisation promoting neoliberal (sometimes call neoconservative) policies, such as, promoting the interests of corporations and the ultra rich, against poor and working people, and in favour of using the power of the state to control behaviour they don’t approve of (though in this case, not religiously based). They also want to privatise pretty much all government functions, in much the same way the USA’s “Doge” is trying to give core US government functions to corporations. That guy is about to become Deputy Prime Minister under the coalition agreement the three parties entered into to form government,

It’s around a year and a half-ish until New Zealand's next General Election, and there’s no way to know what shape politics here or in the US will be in. Will New Zealand join its fellow Commonwealth nations and reject the divisive and negative politics of the USA? No idea at this point, but you can be sure I’ll be talking about it—next year. Right now, I am proud to celebrate with both Australia and Canada.

The weird holiday weekend

Today is Easter Monday, a public holiday in New Zealand, and the conclusion of a four-day holiday weekend. It’s also the weirdest holiday weekend. Still.

I wasn’t originally going to say anything about it this year, especially because I pretty much said all I wanted to in a post on Easter Monday last year, especially my criticism of the wacky and very confusing trading ban rules (most shops are supposed to be closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, even though Easter isn’t a public holiday, and no TV ads can be broadcast on either of those days, or Christmas Day, not until after noon on Anzac Day and every Sunday. There’s since been an update to to something I said in that post last year, especially about the ad bans. I wrote:

The current broadcasting minister, a former TV show host of dubious ability as a minister, has blandly promised a re-write of the [Broadcasting] Act (written way before the Internet or streaming services were a thing), but given the chaos under our current three-ring circus coalition government, I doubt it’ll actually happen. I think that ending the ad bans ought to be done as quickly as possible: They make absolutely no sense, deny NZ broadcasters revenue that foreigners still get, and has nothing whatsoever to do with New Zealand workers and days off.

The first update is that the Media Minister I wrote about was sacked only a few weeks after my post (apparently I’m very influential…). Then, in December of last year, her replacement as Media Minister announced that the government would introduce legislation to allow TV advertising on Sundays and public holidays, because the ad bans don’t apply to streaming services (like YouTube) or to radio, meaning broadcast TV is losing money that other media providers can still get. The Minister told RNZ in the linked article,"Traditional media outlets are operating in an extremely difficult environment and as the government, we must ensure regulatory settings are enabling the best chance of success." Indeed. He also said it “could generate approximately $6 million for the industry” which doesn’t sound like much to me. Even so, I think that’s absolutely the right thing to do—though the government hasn’t yet actually passed the bill.

I still think the trading bans should be removed from Good Friday and Easter, not the least because New Zealand is now majority “no religion”, but mostly because those holidays don’t have the same sort of traditions like family gatherings that Christmas Day does (the other all-day holiday with a trading ban, plus Anzac Day morning has a trading ban, too). So I’m fine with keeping the ban on trading Christmas Day, but the trading bans on Good Friday and Easter Sunday seem silly to me. At the very least, the TV advertising bans should be ended, and maybe they finally soon will be.

Ask Arthur 2024, Part 3: Racism and change

With one more post in this year’s “Ask Arthur” series, I decided to talk about the remaining “heavy” topic today rather than end the series with it, for no particular reason other than it felt right.

So, today’s question is from Roger Green, who asked:

From your vantage point, how has race and racism changed in the United States compared to, say, when you were living in the United States? Was Obama's presidency helpful or harmful in addressing racism; likewise, black lives matter, affirmative action, DEI. What has moved the needle in terms of race in America and in which direction? While you're at it, you could talk about race in New Zealand, which is a different animal, I know.

This topic is one of the most fraught because the opinions have become so polarised, and, for many it’s become a kind of moral litmus test. In my opinion, and from what I’ve seen and experienced personally, the folks on the Left seem to approach the topic from lived experience or based on their values (or both). In contrast, those on the Right seem to come, more often than not, from a place of fear and/or ignorance—which doesn’t mean they’re stupid, just that they’re uninformed, and, sadly, too often by choice.

I watched race and racism in the USA improved steadily, culminating in the election of President Obama. The rise of the “tea party,” however, led to a rise in openly racist rhetoric, leading up to and getting stronger after the 2010 Midterm Elections. To me, it’s been all downhill from there, and the situation is worse now than it was before I left the USA.

President Obama’s election in 2008 broke a barrier, one that can’t be rebuilt. Now, the idea of a black man being president is no longer weird, because it’s already happened. In that sense only, President Obama’s election in 2008 was very helpful. However, he also played down the historic nature of his election and administration, so it didn’t have the legacy-building it could have had. That, however, wasn’t the reason the USA started slipping backward: That was the deliberate work of the Rightwing.

The USA’s Rightwing spent a lot of time and effort spreading propaganda that was built on deliberate lies and disinformation, like, for example, when they said the Affordable Care Act would lead to “death panels”. Many Republican leaders, elected or not, used dog-whistle rhetoric to imply that President Obama and his supporters were "less than” in many ways, though often unspecified. Again, this took flight with the rise of the teabaggers, something I wrote about a lot at the time.

Affirmative Action was a useful policy for reducing systemic barriers to black people (in particular) breaking getting a chance in education and employment, but it was created in a different time when politicians saw the value in lifting up those who had been deliberately excluded from so much of society. Its success reinforced opposition from traditional conservatives, and created resentment among white people who felt that if someone else succeeded, it inevitably meant they (the white people) would have to fail. That was absurd, but telling disgruntled people that their feelings are absurd and not based in reality doesn’t make the disgruntled folks change their minds, it makes them more firmly disgruntled and very angry, something that inevitably leads to reactionary politics and turning back the clock. So, Affirmative Action started out as a positive, but because the resentment of white folks was never properly addressed, it became a flashpoint for everyone who was certain (though almost always wrong) that they’d been deprived of something by “a minority” person. Its downfall was predictable.

The Black Lives Matter movement was, like President Obama, the victim of unrestrained and often unhinged Rightwing rhetoric. By the time that BLM emerged, the Rightwing propaganda system was fully developed and operational, and when combined with legacy media failing to report fairly or accurately, that meant it was possible for people to never hear facts or reality in reporting on BLM, and that meant it was easily scapegoated by white folks who blamed it as an example of why they weren’t rich and CEO of a major corporation (or whatever).

This same fate befell DEI and even Critical Race Theory.

DEI is something that many people didn’t understand at all. Some may have had “cultural training” of some sort at work, which was intended to make sure workers weren’t insensitive to fellow workers or customers who were different from themselves, but it morphed into meaning a different version of affirmative action, leading to their claims that “unqualified” people were supposedly given preferential treatment over “qualified” people who were passed over because they weren’t part of a recognised minority, and that, in turn, led to it becoming an all-purpose epithet against anyone who wasn’t a white, cisgender, heterosexual male, such as, derisively calling someone a “DEI-hire”.

It’s certain that everyone spewing angry rhetoric about CRT has never had anything to do with it, since it was only ever part of graduate-level coursework in very particular fields. Many of the folks complaining the loudest barely completed high school, if that, and because they didn’t know what CRT was, they bought the Rightwing propaganda that it was about teaching 5 year old white kids to hate the fact they’re white—because so many of 5 year olds are doing graduate coursework at universities these days…

So, overall, race and racism have gone backward in recent years, and the main reason is that for far too many Republicans, nativism, white nationalism, christian nationalism, etc., have become defining characteristics of their politics, something that’s been driven by an extensive Rightwing propaganda media ecosystem and politicians eager to exploit it.

You didn’t ask about this, but one of the solutions, in my opinion, is to develop a strong alternative media ecosystem for the centre and the left, one that reports fairly and accurately, without resorting to the lazy “both-sides-ism” of the legacy media, nor the deliberate disinformation the Rightwing uses. If we can’t get back to facts-based and reality-based policy discussions, we won’t have a hope of moving things forward.

Pretty much everything I’ve said is also true for New Zealand, albeit with local flavour and issues specific to this country. The current Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, the leader of a rightwing populist party, campaigned using rhetoric lifted directly from the USA’s MAGAts. Just like their Dear Leader, Winnie (as he’s “affectionately” known) railed against transgender people (such as, he wanted a law that would require restaurant and cafe owners to ensure the public toilets customers used matched their birth gender—though he never said how that was to be done, like, maybe a quick genital check?), and he said that every policy he didn’t like, no matter how sensible, was "woke"—including government programmes designed to help Māori. In a plot twist, Winston is Māori.

Similarly, the leader of a hard-right neoliberal party, and set to become Deputy Prime Minister in around six months, David Seymour, railed against “special treatment” for Māori, and wanted a national referendum on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the nation’s founding document, to strip out everything he decided was “special treatment” for Māori in favour of one standard based on English law and customs. He, too, is Māori.

The current Prime Minister, the leader of the conservative National Party, has also railed again Māori, including demanding that all government agencies must use their English language name first and most prominently. This was in reaction to government departments using their Maori name first, as is the ordinary custom. For example, we used to have Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand, and now those two are reversed. Similarly, Waka Kotahi–NZ Transport Agency is also switched around. In both cases the English name is stylised at a much larger type size than the Māori one. It will surprise no one who knows anything about me that I continue to use the Māori names, and exclusively. 

In doing so, the PM was pandering to the older, mostly white base of his party who “don’t like all that marry [sic] stuff” (older white folks often incorrectly pronounce Māori as “marry”, and it often seems deliberate. During the campaign, the PM said that “no one” could remember the Māori names of government agencies and got them confused, which was an incredibly condescending thing to say: The English names of LOTS of government agencies have changed—sometimes multiple times—and yet the PM apparently thinks that people magically didn’t have any difficulty remembering the changed English names.

Those of us who oppose the current government call it the “Coalition of Chaos” (or CoC) for their general incompetence, the corruption of some ministers, their lies, and their ulterior motives for some of their initiatives. But nowhere is opposition stronger or louder than against the COC’s “war on Māori”, as the loudest critics put it. The haka in Parliament and the <i>massive</i> hikoi (march) to Parliament are probably the best-known overseas. The PM agreed to support Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill only to the First Reading, and then will oppose it at the second and third—something that Seymour has attacked, of course. With National and all the Opposition parties against it, the bill cannot pass, no matter what the mercurial Winston does (though he’s unlikely to support it, if for no other reason than that it’s Seymour’s central policy objective.

Having said all that, there’s a very important way in which New Zealand is very unlike the USA: We can change it at the next election in 2026 by making the CoC a one-term government. If the Centre-Left win the next election, they will undo the worst things the CoC has done to Māori, as well as poor and working people generally. NZ doesn’t have the kind of “establishment consensus” that too often keeps Democrats from making real progressive change when they have power—and, arguably, that’s part of why Democrats lost so badly in 2024. Both the Democrats in the USA and the Centre-Left in NZ have every opportunity to come roaring back in 2026 IF they back real concrete progress. If they do, the conservatives’ failures on race will likely be one of the reasons the Right will be shown the door.

Thanks to Roger for today’s question!

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-24”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously in the 2024 series:

”Let the annual inquisition begin for 2024” – The first post in this year’s series.
”Ask Arthur 2024, Part 1: Pardon?4”
”Ask Arthur 2024, Part 2: An Orange hue”

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 414 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 414, “Circus clowns”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

NZ: Buyer’s remorse?

TVNZ’s 1News released a new opinion poll last night, and the news is not good for New Zealand’s 3-ring circus government. I haven’t talked about how poorly they’re doing, and for a lot of reasons, but there have been so many bizarre actions by this government that it’s been hard to keep up. At the moment, it looks like New Zealanders see it that way, too.

There are several significant things about the poll, including the headline that if the election were held yesterday, the current government would be gone, replaced by a Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori left-leaning coalition. Also, this result is unprecedented: Since polling started, no first-term government has polled so badly so early in its term. The story at the link above sums this up well:

The result is not unprecedented for an incumbent Government although it has historically not happened so early in its tenure. It is similar to poll results for the [John] Key and [Helen] Clark governments in their third terms.

The third John Key-led [National Party] Government was elected in October 2014 and by the July 2015 poll their coalition would have been voted out. The third Helen Clark [Labour Party] Government was elected in October 2005 and by May 2006 their coalition would have been voted out, based on poll results from that time.

So, this result is common enough in the third term of a government—and not in a first term. National lost the 2017 election, two years after the 2015 bad poll results. Similarly, Labour lost the 2008 election, some two years (and a bit) after the bad 2006 bad poll. The current coalition of Chaos Government has only around two and a half years until the next election.

All of which gives hopes to opponents of the current government, however, there’s more to this.

Even based on this poll, the centre-right National Party would be the single largest party in Parliament, though without enough friends to form government. However, they have access to more potential donor money than Labour does, and much—but not all—of New Zealand’s media is friendly to them. Being the party in government gives them the opportunity to do and say things to appeal to potential voters, So, if they really do lose the next election, it’ll be because they couldn’t sense that the wind had changed directions.

The poll result show that Winston Peters’ rightwing populist party, NZ First, wouldn’t make it back into Parliament. However, Winston has been in and out of Parliament a lot over the past 30+ years, and there’s no way to know for sure what’s going to happen with him in two and a half years. However, while the current coalition cannot govern without him—or, more specifically, his party’s MPs—Winston has never had a successful coalition government with National. After the first MMP election in 1996, he was in coalition with National, then Jenny Shipley rolled the Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, and sacked Winston. His MPs, however, stayed with the government, and so, continued to govern until National lost the 1999 election to Labour.

Winston’s history shows us that he can never be counted out forever, nor can NZ First MPs’ loyalty to Winston be guaranteed. This means that he could be back in 2026, but it also means that if he becomes a liability and was sacked from this government, his MPs might stay and support the government, keeping it in power.

The hard-right Act Party has never been hugely popular in New Zealand. For years, the only reason they had an MP in Parliament was that the National Party did a deal for them to hold the Epsom Electorate. In 2023, their candidate won the Tāmaki Electorate, too, but that at least partly due to how unpopular the incumbent National Party MP was because of his hardline fundamentalist “christian” ideology, which didn’t mesh well with the more traditional conservatism of the electorate. For all it’s faults, the Act Party isn’t as aggressively socially conservative as NZ First. While there’s no reason to think NZ voters will suddenly turn to Act (they didn’t do that in significant any election in which National performed badly), they’re also not currently losing support bad as either National or NZ First.

Similarly, the picture isn’t rosy for the Centre-Left, either. Since losing the election, Labour and its Leader, former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, haven’t presented any sort of alternative to the current mess, nor have they articulated any sort of agenda. However, it can be argued that this is wise strategy two and half years out from an election, especially when the current government is making so many mistakes and alienating voters. It’s about keeping their powder dry while the current government keeps scoring own-goals and undermines itself, not the least by doing things that are very unpopular. But that also risks creating opportunities for the Greens, in particular, to present an alternative now, when voters are grumpy with the government, but don’t yet know what they want instead.

The Greens have their own problems and challenges, too. They’ve had several scandals among their MPs, and their Co-Leader recently resigned, being replaced by a second woman. The harsh truth is that while plenty of folks on the Right reflexively—and, frankly, irrationally—despise the Greens, they’re definitely likely to not respond favourably to a party with two female co-leaders: Misogyny and aggressive sexism has been at the centre of much of the harassment that female MPs—especially former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern—have endured in recent years.

Plenty of Pākehā New Zealanders can’t stand Te Pāti Māori (“The Māori Party” in English, and often abbreviated as “TPM”), and much of that is just as reflexive and irrational as dislike for the Greens is. The party mainly represents Māori interests (though many of their policies would affect low-income people of all ethnicities), and it currently holds six of the seven Māori Electorate seats in Parliament, most of which had previously been held by Labour. It doesn’t hold any General Electorate seats.

This evening, 1News did a bunch of “vox pop” interviews of ordinary people, one of whom said something interesting: The government should show more kindness. I think he’s on to something. Most of the government’s ministers, along with Winston, Act’s Leader David Seymour, and even Prime Minister Chris Luxon sometimes, come across as condescending, arrogant, and irritated that anyone would dare question them. That’s how Winston operates on the daily because it’s part of his brand. David Seymour too often acts like he’s still an opposition MP, making what he thinks are witty barbs, but which now make him sound like kind of a jerk. In fact, the whole lot of them don’t seem to have grasped that governing is different from campaigning. The John Key (and later, Bill English) National government spent nine years blaming the previous Labour Government for National’s own failures and mistakes, and the current government is doing the same thing—but they sound much more condescending and arrogant while doing it

While it’s unlikely the current government’s MPs and Ministers will change and stop acting like jerks so much of the time, if they did it would probably help them sell their unpopular agenda. I guess maybe it’s lucky for those of us who oppose them that it’s highly improbable they can learn and do better.

One thing is absolutely certain: It’s going to be a very long two and half years.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 407 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 407, “The circus begins”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

NZ’s new government: A grab bag of hot takes

New Zealand’s new three-ring circus government goes back and forth from from comedy to farce, and the jokes that are its announced policies, while jokes, aren’t even remotely funny. This is going to a long—well, however long this government ends up surviving before it implodes.

So far, one announed policy scrapping has attracted worldwide attention: The Tripartite Regime has announced it will repeal the landmark world-leading smoke-free legislation adopted by the previous Labour-led Government. That legislation would have slowly raised the legal age to buy tobacco products so that no one born in 2009 or later would ever be able to buy tobacco products in New Zealand. It was also slowly reduce the number of places cigarettes could be purchased from 6000 to 600. Naturally, powerful forces moved against it.

The tobacco lobby claimed that not allowing today’s 14-year-olds to ever buy tobacco would lead to skyrocketing increases in blackmarket tobacco, a dubious claim that the National Party Prime Minister, Chris Luxon, has been parroting since coming to power. Given the declining rates of smoking in New Zealand, and that the law wouldn’t even affect anyone for another four years, this was an interesting claim—and probably utter nonsense.

The real reason for the change seems to be tax (though Chris Luxon now denies that, as well as denying the claim that senior National MP Chris Bishop, a former tobacco industry lobbyist, took part in coalition negotiations on the issue). However, ever since the current Job Share Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters (who himself has been a cigarette addict for decades), killed National’s promise to allow foreigners to buy private houses above $2 million, and so, also killed the 15% tax Luxon planned to charge foreigners, National was desperate to find revenue somewhere to pay for their planned tax cuts (which will almost certainly be targeted at helping the rich, if the past is any guide).

Winston apparently struck again in securing a promise to pull all sex and gender education guidelines from schools. Winston wants to prevent schools from addressing any Rainbow issues, gender identity in particular. During the campaign, he promised that if his party formed government, he would pass a law requiring business owners make sure that toilets for customers would only be used by people whose gender corresponded to their sex assigned at birth, though he didn’t say how, exactly, he expected businesses to do that—did he expect them to conduct inspections of customers’ genitals? Probably.

Winston knew he’d never lead any government—only a small fraction of NZ voters ever vote for his party—but by pandering to the most ignorant, bigoted and conspiracy-loving segments of society, he knew he could win votes and get donations to his party. With Winston, politics has always been transactional, not philosophical or ideological. Well, it never used to be.

The thing is, most of the curriculum was about how the body changes, about relationships, diversity, and—most importantly—consent. The goal was to help young people to understand the changes they were experiencing, that there are rules around sex, and that, most importantly, no means no. That, too, will be dumped so Winston can wage his “war on woke”.

Maybe this shows that Winston has spent too much time around cookers and other fans of conspiracy theories, because in many ways he seems to have gone weird. For example, attacking the news media has always been part of his cynical game: His fans ate it up because they hate the new media and/or just like to see Winston go after journalists. Lately, though, his attacks have become downright sinister.

He spread baseless disinformation and lies born out of conspiracy theories about the New Zealand news media, first at the singing of the coalition agreement, then during the photo op at the new cabinet’s first meeting, and also told a media outlet that he’s “at war” with the news media.

Then he truly went off the deep end, spewing the utterly bizarre claim that the news industry was responsible for the long second Auckland Covid lockdown, asking, "Why did [the media] allow the second dramatic lockdown with only one case in Auckland”, and since he was a real, non-job share deputy prime minister when the lockdown first began—um, every accusation is a confession, maybe? Chris Luxon said that Winston puts things in ways he wouldn’t (which must be the understatement of the week), and the Deputy Leader of his Party, Nicola Willis, tried to diminish the seriousness of Winston’a ravings, calling it “hyperbole”. How long can Luxon and Willis carry on pretending like that?

These are only some of the latest highlights from the 3-ring circus, and there will be plenty more to come until Parliament finally goes away for Christmas and gives us a break from them. At the moment, my personal favourite description of the new government and it’s mishmash of policies came from Chlöe Swarbrick, Green Party MP for Auckland Central. Yesterday morning, she told TVNZ’s “Breakfast” programme:

It's definitely not the government of low wage workers, renters, or anybody who sits on the margins of our society. The priorities of the incoming government should be dealing with the dual crises of inequality and the climate crisis.

But instead, what we have with those two agreements is a grab bag of 200-plus-odd random policies that come across more as hot takes from your uncle at Christmas. It's not a vision for the future that New Zealanders deserve. I just can't see how we're gonna get anywhere near the issues that really matter.

Swarbrick also succinctly described the reality of this hodgepodge government: "It's a pair of scissors, it's not a vision for the future of this country.”

This is going to a long—well, however long this government ends up surviving before it implodes or is turfed out.

New Zealand’s 3-ring circus begins

New Zealand’s new three-ring circus government was sworn in today, beginning the most rightwing government has scene in three decades. It’ll be a wild ride.

Last Wednesday, while the clowns continued the circus negotiations, the saga was still funny. The next day, they announced that negotiations had concluded, and the coalition agreement would be signed the next day. On Friday, the agreement was signed, and today the Governor General swore the new Prime Minister and other ministers into office. The “Speech from the Throne”, which is part of the royal opening of Parliament, will be next week.

Apparently the delay last week was because David Seymour, leader of the hard-right “libertarian"-ish Act Party, and Winston Peters, leader of the righting populist New Zealand First party, both thought they should be Deputy Prime Minister. David thought he should get it because he has many more MPs in his party’s caucus than Winston has in his, and supposedly Winston thought he should have it because he’s been in politics for many, many decades, dating way back to when New Zealand was ruled by the Queen (Elizabeth, not Victoria, as perhaps some people might assume…). This is, by the way, the first NZ government to swear an oath of allegiance to any monarch other than Queen Elizabeth II since the middle of the last century.

National Party leader and newly sworn in Prime Minister, Chris Luxon, arranged for David and Winston to share the job. Winston will be Deputy PM for the first 18 months, and then David will take over for the remaining approximately 18 months of the term (assuming, of course, the government lasts 18 months or more). This situation is as absurd as it sounds, but there could be a method to the madness—for one of the two, anyway. Writing in an opinion piece on the website of TVNZ’s 1News, veteran journalist John Campbell said:

Winston Peters gets to be Deputy Prime Minister first, of course. Whoever’s responsible for that is either Winston Peters himself, or someone without a particularly robust understanding of our history. Peters campaigns best when he’s in opposition. New Zealand First has never, once, been returned to government after being in a coalition. Any remote chance of retaining his loyal participation in (to use his least favourite phrase) “Cabinet collective responsibility” would have been enhanced by making him deputy at the end of the three years, not at the beginning. It’s harder to go rogue when you’re second in charge. But his bauble time will be over. (This ain’t his first rodeo.)

The entirety of Campbell’s piece is worth reading, as are several others. Here’s are some more: Former journalist Vernon Small’s piece for The Sunday Star-Times, "The results are in and it’s Winston by a length” also looks at the shape of the new government. Glenn McConnell, political reporter for Stuff, pointed out the "5 surprising policies buried in the National, ACT, NZF coalition agreements”, and the news organisation’s chief political correspondent, Tova O’Brien, pointed out the absurdities in the public signing of the coalition agreement (it was pretty much Winston’s show). Finally, Gordon Campbell’s "On The New Government’s Policies Of Yesteryear”, published on Scoop pretty much sums up National’s coalition partners, and so, why the coalition took the shape it did:

For all the media attention paid to the Seymour v Peters personal conflict, a large number of crossovers exist between the hidebound conservatism of New Zealand First and the Thatcherite young fogey-ism of ACT. Both parties are actively hostile to any form of identity politics, both detest any expressions of indigenous rights, and both oppose any forms of affirmative action being taken to address the existing levels of ethnic or gender dis-advantage.

I did not vote for the circus, of course, and so, I cannot wish the new government “well”, because that would mean wishing them success, something I cannot do: Success would mean taking actions I absolutely oppose. So, I wish them good health instead. The indestructible Winston doesn’t need such wishes despite being 78, and perhaps David doesn’t either (rightwing politicians' rigid ideological certainty seems to be a life-enhancing force for them, though less so their supporters). No, it’s Chris Luxon who needs the wishes of good health. He will have an enormous job merely trying to keep his new playmates under control, and managing Winston will be a full-time job by itself. Preserving his own well-being while serving as ringmaster for his circus will require Luxon's attention and a lot of energy, and for that much he deserves good wishes.

While much of this post was written with my tongue firmly in my cheek (so much so my tongue got cramp), there’s a dark reason for that: The next three years will be painful. So much of what the three intend to do is divisive and will cause a lot of bitter anger, particularly among Māori, but also workers, Rainbow communities, those who care about fighting climate change, and who want action on child poverty, all of whom will be worse off under this government. My concern, though, isn’t that—the next Left-of-Centre government can fix everything the circus destroys, except, maybe, for one thing: The circus’ policies may make more hardcore followers feel they have permission to unleash aggressive, even violent, hatred, just as the leader of the USA’s Republican Party did.

Still, there’s one thing that gives me hope. We had no riots today, no one tried to violently stop the new government. We had no one bleating on that the election was “stolen”. Right on schedule, the caretaker Prime Minister, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins, whose Labour Party lost the election this year, rang the Governor General to formally end the caretaker government’s roll. The new government was then duly sworn in. I didn’t vote for any of them, and while I have grave concerns about how much harm that they will do, that peaceful and orderly transfer of power gives me hope that New Zealand might avoid the fate of so many countries that are falling under the thrall of the far-right, including overt fascists. I suppose the next election will show whether that hope was justified.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 406 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 406, “Interregnum continues”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

New Zealand’s three ring circus

New Zealand’s three ring circus continues, thought at the moment it seems to be the clown show section. This situation is many things, but the word that first comes to my mind is “hilarious”. Of course.

Incoming Prime-Minister-to-be, National Party Leader Chris Luxon, and hard-right Act Party leader David Seymour have finally met with Winston Peters, leader of the rightwing populist New Zealand First party. It only happened after Luxon and Seymour scurried to Auckland yesterday because Peters decided not to return to Wellington yesterday, as had been assumed/planned. Peters is playing them like a well-tuned violin, as is his way, and it seems unlikely they’ll form a new government any time soon.

Historically, the odds are stacked against the new government going the distance: Peters has never had a successful time in government with National. In the early 1990s, before MMP, he was fired by then-Prime Minister Jim Bolger. Then 61 days after the first MMP election in 1996, Peters went into coalition with National—only to be sacked again when Jenny Shipley rolled Bolger and was briefly PM before losing the 1999 election.

History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself (though Peters completed two different coalitions with Labour), but the past is prologue. Stuff’s Tova O’Brien, who I agree with infrequently, and incompletely when I do, has suggested that Luxon’s inexperience led to him overestimating his ability to negotiate a coalition agreement. That seems likely, since he spent his entire working life in corporate jobs, and had no experience in politics until 2020. Plus, he’d literally never met Peters, without whom he can’t form government. He clearly didn’t understand Peters, either.

Sometime in the next week or two, Luxon and Seymour will find a way to give Peters whatever it is he wants, and Luxon will then spin it to make it sound like it was his own plan all along. And Peters will put on one of his trademark grins, knowing he was the puppeteer.

Gotta say, after watching the circus so far, the odds aren’t looking great that the new government, whenever it finally forms, will make it the entire three years. While the show has been funny to watch, it’s also always interesting how when a new government is trying to form, the country gets along just fine without the politicians. Even though that can’t last, it looks like the lolz will—though possibly not for the entire three years?

New Zealand’s in between days

New Zealand still doesn’t have a government, due to a lot of factors, none of them unusual. In the meantime, the Labour-led government remains in place, acting in a caretaker role until a new government is formed, which is also not unusual. However, there was an unusual change this year cause by the results of the General Election last month.

Because of section 6 of the Constitution Act, all the current Ministers tenure was scheduled to end at 11.59pm last night, Saturday, November 11. That would have left New Zealand without a government until the National Party and its support parties can sign a coalition agreement and be appointed by the Governor General.

To avoid leaving New Zealand without a government, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins consulted with National Party Leader Chris Luxon, the presumed incoming Prime Minister, to advise the Governor General to “to reappoint the current ministry to operate in caretaker mode until the new government is appointed.”

It as a simple fix to to the problem, and agreed to by the leaders of the current and incoming governments. However, there was a small complication: The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, lost her seat in the election, and since she wasn’t on the Labour Party List, she left office at 11:59pm last night. Grant Robertson was appointed as the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In announcing the arrangements, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said: “This solution to a constitutional quirk has been amicably agreed and we continue to consult closely with the incoming Government on all key decisions.” All very of matter-of-fact—and I was struck by the shockingly stark contrast between the peaceful transfer of power in New Zealand being “amicably agreed” and the attempted coup in the USA on January 6, 2021.

However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have rightwing freakouts over the formation of the new government. Every day seems to bring more and more moans from the Right about how awful it is that this process is taking so long, how it somehow “proves” that our MMP electoral system is “awful” or “a disaster” (and similarly aggressively negative terms). As is so often the case, the rightwing freakout is utterly unjustified, and it’s flat out wrong—one might even say “ignorant”, if one was feeling uncharitable.

As of today, it’s been 29 days since the 2023 General Election. The time between the election and the official formation of government took 61 days in 1996, the first election under MMP (which was also a coalition with Winston Peters and his rightwing populist New Zealand First party). The shortest amount of time was 11 days in 2008. Overall, the average has been 28.67 days between the election and the formation of government.

The “slowness” this year, then, is still far short of 1996 and will remain so—that was always obviously going to be the case. This year, in fact, things have moved quite fast—especially when you look at the obstacles.

First, the National Party didn’t do as well as it had hoped. While it was never really possible that it would win an outright majority in Parliament as Labour did in 2020, they still hoped to have enough seats that they could govern with only the hard-right Act Party. Because the two parties combined failed to win enough seats to command a majority in Parliament, they instead have to form a deal with Winston (as part of his election campaign, Winston had flat-out refused to work worth Labour after the votes were counted, and Labour Party Leader Chris Hipkins returned the favour).

On election night, there were a number of seats that were too close to call, and the final makeup of Parliament would depend on the Final Results. This made things even more delayed as the results of several seats were subject to recounts. That, in turn, delayed the final writ from the Electoral Commission, and a new government couldn’t be formed even if the three political parties had agreed to a coalition agreement in mere hours—in fact, they couldn't even really begin full negotiations until the final results were announced. The recounts are now pretty much finished, and they haven’t really changed anything, as expected. Negotiations have been fully underway for about a week. 

Another complicating factor is Winston personally. The word “mercurial” may be the nicest way to describe him and his behaviour. He’s always been a political opportunist, seizing on the latest political passions—especially negative ones—to gain votes. So, in order to placate his supporters, Winston may well demand things National and Act don’t want. Or, it may just be his narcissism that drives him to demand things, no matter how unreasonable. Add to that that the fact that he and the leader of the Act Party both bitterly criticised each other in the campaign, and it was pretty obvious that coalition negotiations between the two were likely to be prickly.

All of which means that a delay was to be expected. It was obvious on election night that there was absolutely no possible way this could go any faster. That aside, the process is well within the range of time it’s taken ever since the MMP era began in 1996, something that's easily knowable.

In sum, then, people who are beside themselves over this process of forming a new government need to chill out. A new government will form soon enough, and then everyone can get back to complaining about it. That, too, is predictable.

Time between Election Days and Government being formed, 1996-2020:

1996 election: Election Day was October 12, government began December 12 – 61 days later (a re-elected government).
1999 election: Election Day was November 27 government began December 10 – 46 days later (a new government).
2002 election: Election Day was July 27, government began Aug 15, 2002 – 19 days later. (a re-elected government).
2005 election: Election Day was September 17, government began Oct 19, 2005 – 32 days later (a re-elected government).
2008 election: Election Day was November 8, government began November 19, 2008 – 11 days later (a new government).
2011 election: Election Day was November 26, government began December 14, 2011 – 18 days later (a re-elected government).
2014 election: Election Day was September 20, government began October 8, 2014 – 18 days later (a re-elected government).
2017 election: Election Day was September 23, government began October 26, 2017 – 33 days later (a new government).
2020 election: Election Day was October 17, government began November 6, 2020 – 20 days later (a re-elected government).

Sources:
“Governments in New Zealand since 1856” – NZ Parliament
”General Election Days – NZ History, Ministry for Culture and Heritage
“List of New Zealand governments” – Wikipedia

4 The title of this post made me think of a song (of course), the 1985 single “In Between Days” by English band The Cure [WATCH].

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 405 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 405, “Pensive week”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 403 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 403, “The tide goes out”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.