Posts by Tom Semmens
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Grossly incompetent business class loses another 1.6 billion dollars; breaths sigh of relief as Rodney Hide gives them Auckland in compensation.
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I'll reply in due course, but I'll just add for the moment that you have a fairly flawed understanding of race and class in Australia, Tom.
We are all painting with pretty broad brushes, but my comment is in relation to the idea Australia is more textured, with alternate centres of social and political power and the apparent contradiction to many New Zealand eyes of deep social conservatism combined with "socialist" collectivism.
I am pretty sure that with you being a Green our views on what constitutes effective political leadership will just be different.
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Good lord, I've been ravaged by a south islander! Extraordinary.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, that's like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
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the politics seemed weirdly backwards and conservative, whilst at the same time far more socialist than NZ.
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It's far more acceptable to be openly racist, for example, and gender roles are more narrowly defined than in NZ.
Much of the social conservatism and public racism in Australia is simply evidence of a vigorous and thriving working class, who don't give a flying fuck for middle class sensibilities. It only seems wierd to New Zealanders because in this country the working class has been destroyed as a political force and the only voice heard in public discourse is that of our (largely) neo-liberal middle class. I think it is why the British are so absolutely besotted with Australia - Kath and Kim are instantly recognisable to them, but in Australia there are no toffs to look down on them.
What I mean is the pure nakedness of power within political party membership, with warring factions whose aims are primarily winning over the other bunch within their own party, everything else being a distant second.
Why? Does the evidence indicate that this has hampered the effective governance of Australia? Personally, I like my politicians to be ruthlessly ambitious for power - they are politicians, for God's sake. I am deeply suspicious of anyone who DOESN'T display enough hunger for power. Being a ruthlessly ambitious politician doesn't make you a bad politician - in fact, the exact opposite is probably true. I would have thought our experience with non-politician religious zealots like Douglas and Richardson would have made us envy the flint hard and honed politicians and union leaders of Australia.
I'd love to have our political parties full of people you can't bullshit and to cynical and calculating to be swayed with pseudo-religious ideologies. Don Brash? Roger Douglas? Ruth Richardson? They would have been eaten alive by the Aussie unions and party factions.
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Well, here's a thought: People expect Oppositions to say that the Government sucks donkey cock, and will bring about the end of days if given a chance.
Well, this the crux of the debate, isn't it? As far as I can tell, you are saying the more things change the more they stay the same - my position is New Zealand society has shifted fundamentally into a more socially conservative phase, and Labour will be waiting more than nine years if it can't see this and complacently just expects power to fall back into it's hands using the same old issues and arguments.
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You'll forgive me if I find your dismissing my concerns as worn-out 'identity politics' just a tad... really fucking annoying.
I don't know how you missed the memo, but people are sick to the back teeth with being treated with smug reverse snobbery for daring to disagree with a certain socially liberal POV. There was massive desire to punish Labour last election, exactly because of comments like yours and like a lot of people in the Labour party you don't seem to have grasped the message yet.
So why don't you actually argue your case instead of trying dismissive sarcasm with anyone who disagrees with your core beliefs? I might be fucking annoying, but if the opinion polls have been any guide it seems to me that when it comes to persuading anyone to vote for the left nowadays you are just fucking irrelevant.
Or, gosh, here's a thought: talk to some actual Labour party members, because I haven't actually talked to one to date who agrees with any of the above.
And i agree. The trouble is party members are more or less emasculated, and I would suggest the membership (and indeed, the general population) is much more economically to the Keynsian left than both our main political parties.
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'Hey ladies, homos, and brown folk: could you stop pestering us *normal people* with all your weird little *needs* and whatnot? It's tiresome.'
Speaking of liberal "sneering 'we-know-best' arrogance"...
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protecting children from physical abuse... ...are things that Labour should feel contrite about?
Bradford was a Green MP. I would like to think no Labour politician would have have handled the issue with her inept arrogance.
Section 59 IS a classic example of the liberal "sneering 'we-know-best' arrogance". Not because it was wrong, but because of how it was handled. The so-called party of the people was hurtled headlong into a confrontation with almost 100% of it's base support. And why? Because Sue Bradford was an arrogant MP who couldn't be bothered doing anything other than treating anyone who disagreed with her like a piece of shit on her shoe, until it was to late.
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None on the left will get traction unless they find more practical ways to connect their principles and proposals with the practicalities of everyday life - jobs, prices, prospects. That doesn't mean repudiating social justice and progressive policies - but making the conversation about 'human rights' really won't cut it.
Identity politics is not, as Chris Trotter would have it, a virus that needs to be stamped out in favour of a return to a cloth capped class based political movement. To me, the sort of issues captured by "identity politics" are at heart staples for any left winger - the protection and empowering of marginalised and/or disposed minorities, the demand that we all be treated equally. But identity politics is also the politics of a more comfortable age economically. And to my mind nowadays thing have generationally changed from the long, baby boomer obsession with identity issues. Now it's the economy, stupid. The trouble is the identity politics driven Labour party of the last thirty years is largely indifferent to the gritty economic realities of life in the sub-50k a year world 76% of New Zealanders exist in. How often, for example, has the economy been seriously discussed on public address in the last 18 months? Everyone here seems more worried about their middle age than their fellow Kiwi's middle income.
If you want proof Labour is currently a party colonised by an out-of-touch middle class liberal elite drawn largely from the top 20% of the income spectrum, who are more concerned with whether or not Chris Carter is being discriminated against because he is teh gay than the almost total public anger at his disgraceful abuse of public money and even more outrageous sense of entitlement, just go and read Brian Edward's pathetic attempts to defend Carter on his blog. Scoffing at Whanganui's anti-gang patch laws might go down well over a fine celeriac mash in a gentrified suburb, but it butters no parsnips in run down, disadvantaged, suburbs where gangs terrorise local communities.
Whether we like or not, the identity politics vein is now largely mined out. As far as I can tell, we've reached a new generational social equilibrium, and the "great New Zealand public" has no further appetite for more liberal social reform. Labour can no longer leverage electoral advantage from liberal identity politics - in fact people seem heartily sick of it to the point that we as a country are lapping up a reactionary, authoritarian bully state and loving it.
The trick is how to reconnect with that 76% of New Zealanders for whom National doesn't - and never will - offer anything to, without having to retreat to proposing a poll tax on the Chinese and demanding the death penalty for child killers.
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Were you wanting to sound that arrogant, or did it just come out wrong?
It isn't arrogant, it a statement of fact.
Over a quarter of the countries population will live in the SuperCity. More people live in Auckland than the entire South island. North of Tokoroa contains over two thirds of the countries population, and almost all the population growth occurs there, etc etc etc.