OPINION: By Martyn Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog
In 2014, New Zealanders shrugged off dirty politics and mass surveillance lies and then voted National back in power to protect their speculative property bubble wealth. So, as a progressive, to be where we are three years later with Labour + Greens + NZ First being the majority, that’s a major victory.
Special votes, which include many of the “youth quake” who enrolled and advanced voters, are 384,072 (15 percent of the total vote) and they will not be counted for another two weeks.
It is believed that Labour and the Greens will benefit most from that and expectations are National and NZ First will come down and the Labour/Green bloc will get a boost.
Analysis suggests Labour and the Greens will each add an MP from the special votes which would gives a Labour + NZF + GP a majority of 63 seats in Parliament.
As Labour prepares to put together the negotiating team of their lives, and without knowing who can govern, it is clear from the result as we know it right now that there are some major winners and losers and looming issues that create immediate influence over the next government.
‘Dirty Politics’
The disgusting way National have openly lied to our faces has been extraordinary.
They have utterly failed to explain and justify how their mass immigration, milk powder to China and property speculation economic policy is helping 41,000 homeless, 10,000+ in prison, 300,000 kids in poverty, generations locked out of home ownership, student debt, infrastructure gridlock, mental health breakdown and the rise of the Blue Dragons, and instead just lied to our faces.
There was no $11.7 billion dollar hole in the Labour fiscal plan, no one would have paid more in income tax and claiming inequality and poverty were high because of the Christchurch earthquake as National’s Deputy PM Paula Bennett did was beneath our collective intelligence, but it worked.
Lies, deceit and wilful ignorance was National’s campaign and it worked well enough to win National 46 percent of the vote.
Corporate mainstream media
The right-wing corporate media won this result for National. The tirade of right-wing attack columnists and pundits who swamped all the newspapers and panel shows to repeat National Party spin lines was extraordinary.
The way they lynched Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei for courageously pointing out how damaged and punitive our neoliberal welfare state agencies have become while ignoring a possible Chinese spy in the National government highlights the obscene double standards of our rich white male broadcasters.
Willie Jackson
An incredible result for the Willie Jackson, campaign manager of Labour’s Māori campaign.
A total seven-seat sweep of the Māori electorates on top of an incredible pumping up of the party vote for Labour by Māori voters in the Māori electorates and the general seats marks Willie Jackson out as front bench material.
The Māori faction within the Labour Party is now the largest faction but most importantly, Willie Jackson’s close personal relationship with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters means he is the nervous system connection between Labour and NZ First that Labour leader Jacinda Ardern will need to make a Labour-led government work.
- Read the rest of Martyn Bradbury’s election column
- Revealed: China’s network of influence in New Zealand
