Hamilton West voters sent a direct message to the capital on Saturday, although behind the Labour fence some found it had to read.
For those, the NZ Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett spelt it out:
“Make no mistake: no matter what Labour says about the result, it will be—and should be—very worried about it”.
For its part, Point of Order sees it as vindicating the pollsters who in their national sampling traced the gap widening between Labour and National, and becoming so wide even a budget full of handouts couldn’t do the trick in turning back the tide.
Clearly those in Hamilton West who voted Labour in 2020 deserted in droves Some of them may have felt like Sir Ian Taylor, who delivered his own elegy for Labour in an article in the NZ Herald.
As he put it:
“I have been wondering for some time now what happened to the Labour Party that I have supported all my life.
“I am 72, which means I was voting Labour before the current Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was even born.
“When she was elevated to the top job, I travelled the world bathing in the glow of her international reputation. Her initial response to the Covid pandemic was the envy of the world. Reasoned, compassionate and effective. That was the message so many of her supporters, me included, proudly shared with our international colleagues who marvelled at what was happening in our small corner of the world.
“My answer to them was simple – the world needs more leaders like ours.
“But somewhere things changed and I wondered where it had all gone wrong.
“Last week four events coincided that helped answer that question for me.
“The announcement of the Royal Commission on Covid; Willie Jackson’s ‘train wreck’ interview with Jack Tame on the merger of RNZ and TVNZ; the Three Waters constitutional mistake’… and the Prime Minister featuring on the front page of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.
“I have no idea who is advising the Prime Minister at the moment, but surely that article, on sale in supermarkets across the country where ordinary Kiwis come face to face with the cost of living crisis every week, was as tone-deaf as it possibly could have been.
“The pictures of the Prime Minister accompanying the article clearly demonstrated that the crisis was not something that was at the forefront in the thinking of whoever approved those pictures. Under other circumstances, the pictures might have been viewed as aspirational, but in the context of the very real cost of living crisis, they simply flew in the face of the thousands of Kiwi parents who are struggling every week to find ways to simply clothe and feed their children.
“Having access to the designer clothes the Prime Minister featured in the article must have seemed like some far-off fantasy land where the cost of living was never an issue. But it wasn’t just the pictures.
“In the article, the Prime Minister extolled the importance of being together as a family – especially in challenging times.Well, times didn’t get more challenging than they did at the height of the Covid pandemic. Imagine how those hundred of thousands of Kiwi citizens who found themselves locked out of their country by a totally unfit-for-purpose MIQ system, felt seeing the PM finally acknowledging that being together as a family was important.
“Being there when a loved one was dying. Being there for the birth of your child. Being there because you were now an illegal overstayer holed up in a foreign country with no money and no way to earn it.
“The stories that were shared with me during my fruitless attempts to engage with the Prime Minister’s office over ways we could use new technologies to start bringing our fellow Kiwis home, safely, will remain with me forever”.
A deep and sad disillusion there. One suspects it might be widely shared.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
As he put it:
“I have been wondering for some time now what happened to the Labour Party that I have supported all my life.
“I am 72, which means I was voting Labour before the current Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was even born.
“When she was elevated to the top job, I travelled the world bathing in the glow of her international reputation. Her initial response to the Covid pandemic was the envy of the world. Reasoned, compassionate and effective. That was the message so many of her supporters, me included, proudly shared with our international colleagues who marvelled at what was happening in our small corner of the world.
“My answer to them was simple – the world needs more leaders like ours.
“But somewhere things changed and I wondered where it had all gone wrong.
“Last week four events coincided that helped answer that question for me.
“The announcement of the Royal Commission on Covid; Willie Jackson’s ‘train wreck’ interview with Jack Tame on the merger of RNZ and TVNZ; the Three Waters constitutional mistake’… and the Prime Minister featuring on the front page of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.
“I have no idea who is advising the Prime Minister at the moment, but surely that article, on sale in supermarkets across the country where ordinary Kiwis come face to face with the cost of living crisis every week, was as tone-deaf as it possibly could have been.
“The pictures of the Prime Minister accompanying the article clearly demonstrated that the crisis was not something that was at the forefront in the thinking of whoever approved those pictures. Under other circumstances, the pictures might have been viewed as aspirational, but in the context of the very real cost of living crisis, they simply flew in the face of the thousands of Kiwi parents who are struggling every week to find ways to simply clothe and feed their children.
“Having access to the designer clothes the Prime Minister featured in the article must have seemed like some far-off fantasy land where the cost of living was never an issue. But it wasn’t just the pictures.
“In the article, the Prime Minister extolled the importance of being together as a family – especially in challenging times.Well, times didn’t get more challenging than they did at the height of the Covid pandemic. Imagine how those hundred of thousands of Kiwi citizens who found themselves locked out of their country by a totally unfit-for-purpose MIQ system, felt seeing the PM finally acknowledging that being together as a family was important.
“Being there when a loved one was dying. Being there for the birth of your child. Being there because you were now an illegal overstayer holed up in a foreign country with no money and no way to earn it.
“The stories that were shared with me during my fruitless attempts to engage with the Prime Minister’s office over ways we could use new technologies to start bringing our fellow Kiwis home, safely, will remain with me forever”.
A deep and sad disillusion there. One suspects it might be widely shared.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
4 comments:
Sir Taylor, you were taken in like hundreds of thousands of other New Zealanders by a professional cone artist, no more needs to be said.
More people should read 1984 by george orwell. There is a woke movement to bring down democracy and freedom on every front. Meg vs royal family is one example. Many good people are being conned by the woke movement.
The saga of Labour's decline and its hapless leader is a warning to us all.
As i recall it Labour, were losing badly in the polls against National hence the change of leader from Andrew Little to Jacinda Ardern.
The media fell over themselves with joy, pretty pictures on the newspapers and Labour gained a huge jump in the polls, mainly Women.
The policies hadn't changed at all, change the face and she'll be right.
Labour couldn't believe their luck, a hapless unproven leader with no experience at all won them the election.
It just goes to show how shallow some people are and how unconnected they are to the real world of stuff that runs their lives. The disinterest is quite startling.
The results however are for all to see, total failure. A leader who can't even defend the democratic system that put her their. A leader who is walked over by her Maori caucus, too weak and pathetic to act when they openly go against the party and the Leader.
Wake up New Zealand, starting giving a shit about the vote you have. Choose wisely and remember this Country needs all the people working together to survive in the modern World. Dividing the nation by giving one group more rights than others is no way forward.
Our country is at a crossroads, some of us are fully aware of that, but the vast majority are still a long way off from reaching those crossroads, by the time they do it just might be to late for our country, the other problem both National and Act are also woke parties, there is really nothing on the political menu that gets my juices flowing.
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