David Cormack
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The power is yours
🕑 Added 2023-07-23 21:33:12 +0000 UTC
My column last week in the Post (which I'll republish in full below) was bleak. I was recovering from Covid when I wrote it, and feeling pretty down about the whole state of politics (the news this morning about Kiri Allan is awful and I really hope she's doing ok and surrounded by people who love her).
Both our major parties seem committed to doing nothing I like. Labour is running the small target strategy that everyone thought National would run, while Luxo is taking National on a merry walk off to the right, tacking to a place we haven't seen National go since Brash was in charge.
But then yesterday the Greens officially launched their campaign, and James Shaw's speech gave me a bit of hope again. The slogan is "The Time is Now", which is reminds me a lot of Captain Planet's "The Power is Yours", but that's fitting for the Greens...but back to the speech.
He started off setting the scene:
I think I speak on behalf of most New Zealanders, when I say that our political leaders owe us a conversation based on evidence.
I say that, because the fear and anxiety National and ACT have filled our headlines and social media feeds with, over the last 12 months, appalls me.
They are using fear as a motivator because they have nothing else.
No vision.
No courage.
No moral compass.
They know that the knee-jerk, back of an envelope ideas they are putting forward work for nothing other than getting a “tough” looking headline.
But that’s exactly the point.
It is a political tactic to win an election, not a meaningful response.
And the more they do it, the more an important question keeps getting obscured:
What exactly are we actually trying to achieve?
It speaks to the broader malaise affecting the public's attitude towards politicians:
Over the next few months, you are going to hear a lot about who is up and who is down in the polls.
Who is winning the race to be the preferred Prime Minister.
There will be TV debates, attempts at political point-scoring, big announcements.
Probably a mistake, or two.
And hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on advertising.
The campaign will probably feel trivial at times.
More focused on personalities than the issues that matter to your day-to-day lives.
And he articulates the awfulness of a possible Nat/ACT Government better than anyone else has so far:
When National and ACT are more interested in cutting taxes for the wealthiest few, than they are in guaranteeing everyone enough to live on and put food on the table, I can tell you, that they are not thinking about you.
Or your family.
When they are more interested in putting kids into prison cells than homes, I know for sure, they are not thinking about what’s best for your community.
When they are more interested in tearing up the legislation that is driving down carbon emissions across Aotearoa, I promise you, they have not given a second thought to the world your kids will grow up in.
And one thing he does that makes me so happy is he talks about the outcomes of the Green's policies. He doesn't just talk policy:
And today, we say that with a strong Green voice in the next government, we will introduce an Income Guarantee and a fairer tax system to pay for it.
So that 95 percent of New Zealanders will pay less income tax and no one will pay any tax at all on the first $10,000 they earn.
So that they can always afford the weekly shop.
Or pay the rent.
Or cover unexpected costs.
So that everyone can have peace of mind.
Even when times are tough.
I recommend you go read the whole thing. It's genuinely inspirational. I have no idea if the delivery matched the words, but I'm told that James "knocked it out of the park".
I've been weighing up where to give my party vote. I'm either voting Greens, or Te Pāti Māori. Reading James' speech, tilts me that way. But I'm still up for grabs.
---
The Post column:
OPINION: I brought my dog into my company’s office. We all did our job.
Meanwhile a family somewhere in Northland had to decide between heating their home and eating dinner.
I went out for a drink with a prominent New Zealander. He got on it a bit much, and spent most of the evening shout-talking at me. Meanwhile a woman in Christchurch was packing her suitcase in terror to flee to a refuge to escape domestic violence.
A politician compared our inflation rate to the rest of the world. As though petty political point-scoring would make the prices at the supermarket go down for the young father who just wished he could afford nappies and formula.
“Young offenders will face more accountability for their crimes” bellowed a Beehive press release. While it circulated, a 13-year-old made a TikTok about a boy he had a crush on, before joining his mates at the playground to drink scrumpies and maybe get up to mischief.
Each of the above feature two clauses. The first clause is based on a story that the media has covered in the last week. The second clause is just the norm of what’s going on in Aotearoa at the moment.
Did you know that the unemployment rate in Aotearoa – at the last quarter’s reporting – was 3.4%? Historically this is staggeringly low. Did you also know that an unemployment rate of 3.4% means there are more than 100,000 human beings who want to find work but cannot?
One hundred thousand people. That’s a lot of people who want to be able to put food on their table. Or shoes on their kids’ feet. Or have enough for a beer, or go to a movie, or take a holiday.You may have heard that the world has just experienced the hottest seven-day period ever (at least since they had the instruments to record this in 1850). But did you know that there are wildfires burning out of control in Greece, Spain, and Italy?
That in California’s Death Valley it reached over 53 degrees? Last summer, in Europe, more than 60,000 died because of the heat. This summer it’s expected to be more.
Sixty thousand people. That’s half a Dunedin. Gone.
All of the above issues hurt the individual. The individuals they hurt tend to be those at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. And all of those issues have solutions that politicians all around the world actively choose to not do.
Which means all of those problems are a choice. We choose to let families go hungry. We choose to not divest from fossil fuels. We choose to allow capitalism to run unfettered, ruining huge numbers of lives as it makes a small number of people unfathomably and unnecessarily wealthy. We then choose to not tax them fairly.
I am writing this column from our spare bedroom as I recover from my second round of Covid.
Did you know that one of the best things we could do for Covid is provide proper ventilation for our schools’ classrooms? We choose not to do that either.
Instead we choose to tut-tut at the gangs who provide some kind of community for those who have been ignored by other communities.
We cry out for politicians to be “tough on crime!” instead of being “smart on poverty”, which would truly be smart on crime.
We choose to shake our heads in disappointment or mirth at our political figures for not knowing the exact CPI, or unemployment rate, or some other obscure figure when we should be shaking our heads at the inaction on helping those who most need it but are least likely to ask.
This year there is an election. That is one of the biggest choices we can make. Who is going to govern us for the next three years?
We’ll go into the voting booths, and we’ll choose which two boxes to tick.
And from there a government will be formed that will put in place a bunch of laws based on a watered down, flawed ideology.
And in the end, for most of us, that choice won’t matter.
Because it’s all just tinkering around the edges. It’s all just student politicians playing grown-ups. It’s all just so futile. To those whom the decisions truly matter, we barely listen.
And we choose to live like this.
Comments
David Cormack
It's a good question. But slightly off-piste. James says that National is fear mongering towards society, whereas his "fear mongering" is directed towards National's policies. e.g. National is saying Māori are trying to claim your water infrastructure, which is fear mongering of Māori so people will vote a certain way. Whereas James is saying that National's policies will result in XYZ. I don't think I'm making myself clear here, and maybe I am trying to justify hypocrisy. But it seems different to me.
Maxine Gay
Yes, James Shaw gives me hope
The Blue Review
So you decry fearmongering in general but applaud it when Shaw aims it at National? That said, I am willing to believe that both you and Shaw genuinely (wrongly) believe the jaundiced description of National's objectives and actions that he put forth... making the claims to hope for an evidence-based campaign very ironic. So, we have an interesting question to ponder... is it fearmongering if you're genuinely afraid (no matter how irrational that fear may be)? ^Cam
