https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1014406279577003

The DCC is now paying an Unsustainable $1,000,000 per week interest on our BILLION$ DCC group debt and nobody even talks about how to pay it back or how we can keep paying the interest!

CHRIS TROTTER: Make or Break

The following post was written in January 2022. What sounded somewhat hysterical just 18 months now sounds utterly plausible.

He Puapua threatens to do to New Zealand’s Right what Rogernomics did to its Left.

IN LESS THAN TWO YEARS the New Zealand Right will face a battle for its very survival. If the combined votes of Labour and the Greens add up to a parliamentary majority in 2023, then the rules of the political game will be changed fundamentally. Capitalism as we have known it, along with our liberal-democratic political system, will be changed profoundly.

The re-foundation of New Zealand (a name which the new Labour-Green government will likely consign to the dustbin of history) will make it virtually impossible for the traditional Right to stage a comeback – at least democratically. Why? Because there will be literally nowhere for the force of a right-wing majority to be brought to bear. The restoration of the status quo ante will, constitutionally, cease to be an option.

Over the top? Don’t you believe it. This is how top-down revolutions work. The first decisive changes are made, and then, if the revolutionary government is re-elected, those changes are embedded beyond the capacity of practical politicians to reverse.

Still don’t believe me? Well then, cast your mind back (or grab a good history book) and review the processes by which the reforms of “Rogernomics” were first implemented and then rendered permanent by the Lange-Palmer-Moore Labour Government of 1984-1990.

More importantly, consider the behaviour of the National Party following the 1990 General Election. In spite of Jim Bolger’s promise to restore the “decent society”, his National Government refused to unwind the economic changes of Roger Douglas and his allies. Indeed, the National Party’s Finance Minister, Ruth Richardson, ably assisted by Jenny Shipley and Bill Birch, turned out to be the one which placed the capstone on the Neoliberal Revolution. By 1993, the social-democratic state erected by the First Labour Government and its successors had been almost entirely dismantled.

Nearly 30 years later, no serious attempt has been made to rebuild it.

This is the key point to take away from the Rogernomics experience. Unless a top-down revolution is stopped in its tracks at the very next election, the chances of rolling it back at some point in the future are reduced to something very close to zero.

Not only will the public servants, business leaders, politicians, academics and journalists controlling the revolutionary process win the time needed to make the necessary legislative changes, but they will also enjoy sufficient time to change the ideological environment in which politics is conducted. By 1990, six years after the neoliberal revolution was unleashed, there simply wasn’t the will in either of the major parties, to launch a counter-revolution. Jim Anderton’s New Labour Party, the only political party unequivocally committed to reversing Rogernomics in 1990, received just 5 per cent of the popular vote.

That’s why 2023 is so important. If the National Party and its ally, Act, are not unequivocally committed to rolling back the ethno-nationalist changes already imposed: the Maori Health Authority; Three Waters; Te Putahitanga; and to repudiating entirely the whole He Puapua blueprint; then by 2026 it is almost certain that neither of the right-wing parliamentary parties will any longer want to. By then, the ethno-nationalist constitution imposed upon “Aotearoa” will be seen by virtually the entire political class as no more than the application of simple “common sense”.

That’s how hegemony works.

Rolling back the He Puapua Revolution will not, however, be easy.

Perhaps the biggest problem confronting the parties of the Right will be a mainstream news media resolutely opposed to giving the ‘hate speech’ of ‘racism’ a platform. Unless National and Act conform to the new ethno-nationalist orthodoxy, they will find it next-to-impossible to secure even-handed media coverage. Rather, they will be presented as fronting a racist, white-supremacist campaign to preserve the ‘privileges’ of ‘colonisation’. Increasingly, the 2023 election will be framed as a life-and-death struggle between the retrograde ideologies of New Zealand’s past, and the Labour-Green promise of a re-founded, te Tiriti-guided, ‘progressive’ Aotearoan future.

The parties of the Left don’t even have to be nasty about it. All they have to do is adapt the crushing line from the movie “Don’t Look Up”. In the movie, whenever a right-wing Boomer makes an unforgivably racist or sexist remark, the stock response from the people in charge is: “He’s from another generation.” Confronted with National’s and Act’s promises to roll back the He Puapua blueprint, Jacinda Ardern and Marama Davidson have only to smile sadly and shrug: “They’re ideas from another generation.”

There’s no worse fate than to be killed with kindness!

The Right is also likely to be hounded by the already shamelessly politicised Human Rights Commission. (Act has, after all, promised to abolish it!) The Commission will call out the parties of the Right for their ‘racism’, ruthlessly and continuously branding their policies as ‘white supremacist’ and ‘colonialist’. With the endorsement of the HRC, other groups will use Labour’s new hate speech law to embroil the right-wing parties and their leaders in court case after court case.

The $64,000 question is not whether these sorts of tactics will lead to polarisation, but exactly where the break in the electorate will occur. If most of those over the age of 50 are driven into the arms of the Right by the He Puapua blueprint then the election will be a damn close-run thing. If, however, it is only a solid majority of the over-60s who opt to stand up for New Zealand (as opposed to Aotearoa) then Labour-Green will likely edge out National-Act. Obviously, effective polling and focus-group work will identify the trends long before Election Day.

Which, inevitably, brings us to the last and most important question: Is the leadership of the National and Act parties capable of withstanding the unrelenting pressure of the ‘racist’ accusation that most New Zealanders currently go to almost any lengths to avoid? Does Christopher Luxon have the mental resilience to confront charges of racism head-on and, Jordan Peterson-style, out-argue his accusers? Does David Seymour? Or will the old saying “explaining is losing” cause them to throw in the ideological towel and join the merry ethno-nationalist parade?

Upon the answer to this question will turn the future of the New Zealand Right. If, as happened to the Labour Party after Jim Anderton and his followers broke away from it in 1989, the new ideology simply swallows up National’s members and parliamentarians, then the He Puapua blueprint will, like Rogernomics, become firmly embedded in New Zealand’s legal and administrative infrastructure. Moreover, it will do so with the same impressive level of cross-party support – quite possibly surpassing the 75 per cent required for major constitutional reforms.

The New Zealand Right thus has no choice but to transform the 2023 General Election into a make or break proposition. If, however, it is electorally broken by its Labour-Green opponents, then politics in Aotearoa-New Zealand will undergo an irreversible sea-change. The constitutional re-foundation of the country suggested in He Puapua will swiftly render the old Left/Right ideological conflicts redundant. By 2026, Aotearoans will be battling politically over very different issues.

Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz. This article was re-published at Breaking Views

https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/dave-witherow-retrospect

https://realitycheck.radio/cr-lee-vandervis-on-dunedin-city-councils-debt/

Just so that everybody [fluent in te reo and NZ sign language] knows how to drive on NZ roads, we now have bi-lingual road signage being forced upon us.

None of the objections or difficulties I noted as below were included in the DCC submission to government on bi-lingual road signage.

From: Lee Vandervis lee@vandervision.co.nz

Date: Monday, 19 June 2023 at 12:06 PM

To: Simon Drew Simon.Drew@dcc.govt.nz, “Council 2022-2025 (Elected Members)” council.2022-2025@dcc.govt.nz, Sandy Graham Sandy.Graham@dcc.govt.nz

Cc: “Executive Leadership Team (ELT)” elt@dcc.govt.nz, Jeanine Benson Jeanine.Benson@dcc.govt.nz, Gina Huakau Gina.Huakau@dcc.govt.nz

Subject: Re: Council Submissions on He Tohu Huarahi Māori bilingual traffic signs

Hi Simon,

I disagree with the proposed change to bilingual traffic signage and I believe that the vast majority of people I represent also do not want it..

The fundamental purpose of traffic signage is for safety and to direct traffic, often with split-second decision making.

There is already evidence of signage overkill, strict nzta rules around letter sizes/competing signage/etc., and signage confusion causing accidents and death, because of legibility issues especially in bad weather.

Bi-lingual signage will only make these already recognised problems much worse.

The claim that “Bilingual signs will help ensure there are everyday opportunities for all New Zealanders to engage with and use te reo Māori.“

is ridiculous as there are already panoramic opportunities to engage with and use re reo Maori if people want to.

Reading traffic directions is not an opportunity to engage in alternative language learning.

Such a major proposed change to bi-lingual signage should be preceded by a central government referendum on the issue.

The cost of such change even when staged will be considerable in terms of dollars, but the really terrible cost will be in injuries and lives lost through confusion, especially for the millions of tourists that use our already dangerous roads.

Regards,

Lee

Hawkin’s Council hangover continues with another $146,000,000+ extra debt this year, much of it funding ‘Shaping Dunedin Future Transport’, which I see as shagging Dunedin Future Transport, driving cars out of our city, slowing traffic and making parking even more difficult.

I have often been alone in voting against $100,000,000 of recent planet-saving transport changes including: $28 million used to slow George st traffic to a one-way crawl, the $16 million being spent to send One-Way system traffic [also to be slowed] to the far side of our Railway Station, the $9 million proposed to fund ‘way-finding apps and signage’ to direct people to increasingly scarce parking rather than provide parking, the budgeted $10 million ‘park and ride’ carparks at Mosgiel and Burnside where motorists will be ‘encouraged’ to park and then bus into the City Centre, another $30 million on more cycleways that remain grossly underused, and $20 million for ‘surface treatments’ down Princes street where carparks will be lost to a ‘priority bus lane’… 

The ODT reported some of the debate, but missed the real $100,000,000 borrowed and wasted transport spend issue:

May 20 2023, Otago Daily Times

My debate speech video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxjnQ12Kw9g&t=4550s

Dunedin is over-reliant on Central Government funded institutions like the Hospital and the University.

Especially as Government funding tends to go to marginal Parliamentary seats up north…

See next post above for what has actually happened after the big Stadium debt blow-out, in the latest DCC debt graph.

War – what it is good for? – absolutely nothin’.

So sang Edwin Starr in the 1970s #1 hit single which added to pressure on the US Government to withdraw its forces from Vietnam.

But the simple appeal of the idea that War is ‘good for nothing’ really is simplistic.

As Jimi Hendrix said “Of course war is horrible, but at present it’s still the only guarantee of peace.”

That present has moved on with a rapid decline in war deaths since 1945, but as the conflict in Ukraine shows, War remains an ever-present threat…
And the Ukraine War is not just a War in Ukraine but a Civil War of the West with terrifying possible consequences for all of us.

I am not so sure that War can guarantee Peace, but many who have fought in Wars that we now commemorate did so with that belief.

Technology has moved on too, so that now War is far more deadly, more visible, and more focused than ever before.

War is obviously good for arms manufactures, for technological development, and often for boosting an economy.
Henry Ford made millions supplying truck engines to both sides, the Allies and the Germans in WW2, and he was one of many that profited greatly from War.
There are always some big winners in War, but most of us are losers.

We are here today to commemorate those that lost their lives, their healthy bodies, and sometimes their healthy minds to the horrors of War in defence of our peace and our freedoms. 

My first of 3 recommended books today is #1 Van der Kolk’s ‘The Body Keeps the Score’.
Van der Kolk is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University of Medicine and his insightful book gives telling testimony of Vietnam War veterans’ traumatic experiences and how mentally damaged some are as a result of horrific War experiences.

The old saying ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ is obviously untrue as psychiatry begins to unpack post-traumatic-stress-disorder and other by-products of War.

We should ask ourselves to consider how attitudes to War have changed, and use ANZAC DAY to reflect on War and what We can learn from past conflicts.

My personal view of War has been very much shaped by my Grandfathers’ War experiences in Holland, and my Father’s experiences in Indonesia – Holland’s version of Vietnam after WW2.

My paternal Grandfather was a wealthy building contractor before WW2 and had 4 spec houses on the go when War broke out, but he only managed to sell one of them.
His reaction to the outbreak was to buy a whole trailer-load of Havana cigars as he was ‘not going to sit through another War without his favourite cigars’.
The War, loss of fortune, and privation made him so miserable however that hardly smoked any of them and in the third bitter Dutch winter of the War he traded the whole trailer-load of cigars on the black-market for a pan of fat.

He had to hide my then 16 year-old Father from the Germans who would have conscripted him for the army or munitions manufacture, as they did with most able Dutch males. The well-disciplined occupying Germans generally left the females alone.
They used to do occasional dawn raids on homes and rush into bedrooms to check how many beds were warm, and how many females there were in the house. If there was an extra warm bed they would tear the house apart to find the hidden male. I have wondered what effect years of sleeping in one of his sisters’ beds would have had on my pubescent teenage Father. Perhaps that explained why he never talked about sex.

I was named after my maternal Grandfather Lieuwe Bylsma, who was a conscientious objector in WW1.

He refused to kill anybody, and was consequently sent to the front line trenches where he was forced to peel potatoes with bullets and shells blasting all around him. Miraculously he survived.  

The best book I have read describing the horrors of WW1 trench warfare is # ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Remarque. The movie doesn’t do the book justice unsurprisingly.
By the time of WW2 my maternal Grandfather had a transport business and had taught himself fluent German, so was able to convince the occupiers that he was a Nazi sympathiser and was prepared to distribute hospital supplies for the Germans if they let him keep two of his trucks.

With no petrol available he modified his trucks to run on wood gas and amongst his wide range of contacts he knew a master forger who was not long out of jail. With these resources he was able to steal half of the German medical supplies for his extended Community around Utrecht, as the Germans saw no problem with half-empty trucks as long as the paperwork was perfectly matched.
At night-time he ran a kind of Secret Army using his trucks to ferry Jews and some downed British airmen to the coast to get them safely to England.
It was my teenage mother’s job to flirt with patrolling German soldiers at the front gate of their house so that they would not enter and search for hidden escapees. 
It is hard to imagine the responsibility she bore, knowing that if she did not keep these usually young patrollers diverted and send them on their way that my Grandfather and Uncle Henk were waiting either side of the front door with lead coshes that would see them buried in the back garden that night.  

My point in contrasting my different Grandfathers’ differing War experiences, is that the Financial Capital on my father’s side was of little use in the War, and his being able to buy anything he wanted in Peacetime made for a very miserable hungry War experience.
My Mother’s Father on the other hand, with his range of skills and contacts – his Social Capital, was able not just to survive the War but to be effective in saving lives and keeping his family and Community healthy. 
War brought his Community together, everyone did whatever they could and real Trust in each other was vital to surviving the Occupation.
Uncomfortable memories were likely the reason my Grandfather did not volunteer talking about the War, but when I could wheedle some stories out of him it was obvious that he had reveled in those years of confronting adversity that had brought them all so closely together.
The potential to live an effective and even joyful life whatever the circumstances is forcefully brought home in a wonderful short book called #3 ’Man’s search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist who survived Auschwitz.

The horrors of War cannot be overstated, but the power and riches drivers for making War should also not be underestimated.
‘War is hell’ as US General William Sherman’s said to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879.

The Hellishness of War has not been much of a deterrent for making War since however, and our attitudes to War have varied significantly over time and in different places.

In a more connected world our divisions now seem as deep as ever, and vicious Wars world-wide reflect the petty usually emotional battles we tend to indulge personally with each other.

‘There is nothing worth having that you don’t have to fight for’, but there are many different ways to fight for something, and physical battles are being superseded by emotional and psychological battlefields.
Artificial Intelligence will speed this process so that Wars are now more about ideologies, hearts and minds, rather than land or resources.

We should ask ourselves: ‘What do we really value?
And what are we prepared to do to keep the Peace and to keep what we really value?

What in fact are We good for?

Do Good and Be Good.

 
Thank you for your attention.

60 of 67 Councils voted to opt out of the 3 Waters takeover when this Labour government misled us into thinking we had a choice.

Now 10 regional entities instead of the earlier tribal 4, still with 50% Maori governance, remains the theft of Dunedin ratepayers’ paid-for over 150 years billion$+ investment in our water distribution systems.

“The entities would be owned by councils “ is a much-repeated falsehood.

Ownership is defined as ‘having control over an asset’ and Councils would have no control under the un-elected 50% Maori governance that has been pivotal since MP Mahuta misrepresented it.

I have long advocated leaving Local Government NZ for the reasons Brown gives but also because they have degenerated into excusing Central Government excesses like forcing 3 Waters ‘reform’ on Councils when 60 of 67 Councils voted to opt out of MP Mahuta’s 3 Waters scheme.

I have also advocated unsuccessfully that the DCC no longer fund SOLGM for similar self-serving reasons. I see little ratepayer value in either organisation.

“Taituarā — Local Government Professionals Aotearoa (formerly SOLGM) is the national organisation that supports and develops local government professionals in New Zealand.”

Auckland Council quits LGNZ

Auckland:Auckland Council has quit Local Government New Zealand, Mayor Wayne Brown questioning its value after seeing hundreds of members ‘‘getting p….. all night long’’ at its conferences.

Mr Brown used his casting vote to pass the measure after the vote was split 10-10 at yesterday’s council meeting.

LGNZ is a representative group for local government across New Zealand and provides advocacy and support for local councils.

Mr Brown said membership of LGNZ, was costing about $640,000 a year. — RNZ

“Vandervis’ growth comparisons draw criticism” ODT 9/3/23

A more informative headline would have been ‘Councillors in denial as Vandervis lists lagging economic indicators’

From our factual Infometrics agenda I quoted a long list of graphically highlighted facts showing Dunedin lagging behind NZ averages, often for decades:

Population growth lagging since 1997.

Household income.

General earnings.

Annual average employment growth lagging behind NZ for 20 years.

Self employment rate lagging at far below NZ average.

Dunedin 2022 productivity was 15.3% lower than NZ average…

If we do not even recognise our economic lags, we are not well positioned to fix them.

It appears that Mr Ford, “kaituitui, or community connector for the Disability Issues Advisory Group” had not consulted Group representatives before making a personal complaint to Council about my appointment as Chair of the Disabilities Group as reported in the ODT.

There was no ‘We’ as Ford claimed and was reported…

“We raised concerns with the council about the chairing of DIAG, and are pleased to see that these concerns have been taken on board.”

Today’s ODT letter to the Editor brings some welcome clarity to what actually happened.

I accepted Mayor Radich’s suggested extra role of Chair of the Disabilities Group because of my 18 years experience as the father of a severely disabled autistic son and being part of the disabled support organisations community.

This seems not to be enough for disabled Mr Ford, who played politics in the 2016 Mayoral election including denying the fact that a severe speech disability limits a speaking role such as a City Councillor.

“Mr Ford said the assembly would ask the council to ensure the chair or co-chair of the group was a disabled person.”

The Perry/Timmings claim that I said ‘Perry should not run for Council because of his speech disability’ was a 2016 election campaign falsehood that the ODT repeated again today.

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/dcc/vandervis-move-disability-role-welcomed

Lee Vandervis

Shared with Public

We may never know what made Jacinda jump or who emptied her tank, but Chris Trotter’s 3 Waters insights hint at part of what has been going down.

Chris Trotter:

Blowing off the froth – why Chris Hipkins must ditch Three Waters

Worth sharing

CHRIS TROTTER writes…

THERE’S FROTH, AND THERE’S BEER. What we see happening on the Waitangi Treaty Grounds every 6 February, not to mention the political performance-art on the lower marae, is froth.

The beer of Māori-Pakeha relations is to be found in the private meeting rooms of Waitangi’s Copthorne Hotel & Resort, where the National Iwi Chairs Forum (NICF) deliberates in secret upon Maoridom’s next moves. It is there, in the days leading up to Waitangi Day, that New Zealand’s new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, will either face down the men and women driving the stake of co-governance into the heart of the Settler State – or see Labour spiral slowly to defeat.

The designation “Iwi Chairs” seems so innocuous. It conjures up the image of a roomful of corporate bureaucrats working their way through a very boring agenda, and breaking-off every now and then to listen to equally boring presentations from bankers, accountants and the occasional politician.

In reality, the NCIF represents the High Command of Maoridom: the strategic hub of the campaign to take back control of Aotearoa from its Pakeha conquerors. Those gathering at the Copthorne are not a bit like the rag-tag groups of Māori nationalist activists that came together in the 1970s and 80s. If tino rangatiratanga means “the power of the chiefs”, then these are the chiefs who wield it.

Thanks to thirty years of Treaty Settlements, the NICF is both well-positioned and well-resourced to flex its muscles. Between them, the iwi represented at the Forum command assets valued in the billions.

That buys them all the big law firms and all the big lawyers they need. It buys them top-of-the-line lobbyists and public relations experts. It buys them influence in the news media and the universities. It means that, when the NICF whistles, serious politicians from all the major parties tend to come running – up to and including prime ministers.

In short, the NICF is what you get when you don’t want hundreds-of-thousands of working-class Māori demanding their fair share of the national cake. An uprising of marginalised urban Māori (the primary focus of Māori political agitation in the 1980s) could hardly avoid inspiring an even larger number of marginalised Pakeha.

Such a potent socio-economic alliance would be extremely harmful to capitalism and other exploitative creatures. Hence the Crown’s inspired prophylactic against the further radicalisation of the Māori working-class – the Treaty Settlement Process.

Make a handful of Māori aristocrats and other assorted high-flyers rich and powerful, and not only can they then be relied upon to keep the urban Māori poor quiet, but also to co-opt anyone of a mind to stir them up.

For a while.

The great risk of re-establishing a well-resourced and powerful indigenous elite is that, a generation or two later, those responsible will be faced with confident, highly educated young Māori who can think of no good reason why they – the privileged beneficiaries of the Treaty Settlement Process – should continue to provide a buffer between the heirs of their colonial conquerors and the tens-of-thousands of Māori families made poor, and kept poor, by colonisation.

What’s more, this generation will evince no interest in constructing a Māori-Pakeha working-class alliance against either Pakeha Capitalism or the Neo-Tribal Capitalist sub-system brought into being by the Treaty Settlement Process.

The generation raised under this ethnically charged neo-liberal regime will not be socialists, they will be ethno-nationalists. If wealth is to be redistributed, it will not be from the rich to the poor, but from the descendants of the Pakeha colonisers to the descendants of the colonised Māori.

It will be a revolution driven by race, not class.

There could be no better example of the policies generated by the iwi elites and their political representatives than the project known as Three Waters. Putting Private Members Bills to one side, it is rare to encounter a piece of legislation so closely associated with and shaped by a single member of Cabinet – in this case, the then Local Government Minister, Nanaia Mahuta.

Nor is it common to see a legislative project preceded by an advertising campaign subsequently condemned as both misleading and inaccurate. The Labour Government’s decision to reverse its earlier affirmation that local authorities would be free to opt-out of the scheme only compounded the ethical problems besetting Mahuta’s project.

At the forefront of these was the legislation’s commitment to “co-governance”. In the midst of structures specifically designed to protect the relevant “entities” from all forms of democratic accountability, the legislation located a body split 50/50 between members supposedly chosen to represent the interests of local consumers, and those indisputably chosen to represent the interests of local iwi.

NZ First’s Shane Jones’s description of Mahuta’s Three Waters Project was typically robust:

What was initially an attempt to fix some drinking water has turned into a highly divisive and pulverising social experiment that has got nothing to do with poo pipes and infrastructure. Now it’s got everything to do with whether or not tribes should have a superior right [over water].

Jones also argued that Jacinda Ardern’s government had “lost control” of Mahuta’s project:

She was unable to control Nanaia Mahuta, who has proven to be one of New Zealand’s most divisive politicians that God ever put breath into.

Nowhere was Ardern’s loss of control more evident than in the parliamentary debacle which followed the last-minute, constitutionally-dubious, attempt to entrench “anti-privatisation” clauses in the legislation setting up the Three Waters project as it neared the end of its passage, under urgency, through the House of Representatives.

If ever a project needed to be abandoned completely, and the rebuilding of New Zealand’s drinking, storm and wastewater infrastructure reconceptualised in ways that keep it both affordable and accountable, then that project is Three Waters.

Not that the Iwi Chairs gathered at the Copthorne Hotel are likely to see it that way. Mahuta’s project had brought them closer to Jones’s “superior right” over water than any of her predecessors. Their message to Chris Hipkins is likely to be blunt: repeal Mahuta’s legislation at your peril.

New Zealand’s new Prime Minister knows that the National Iwi Chairs Forum has the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, Hipkins’ direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic and unequivocal pledge to repeal the Three Waters legislation and start again.

If Labour is to secure a third term, then Hipkins must make it clear to all New Zealanders – Māori and Pakeha – that his government is not about fulfilling the agendas of corporate/tribal elites. It is about making sure that every New Zealander in need of a job, a living wage, and a warm, dry house, gets one. That their family’s right to publicly-provided, quality health care and education is not denied. And that the promise of equality, enshrined in Article Three of the Treaty of Waitangi, is kept.

Because that’s the only beer that’s electorally fit for Labour to drink: the beer of class – not race.

Everything else is froth