In the 2023 New Zealand general election, the current National, ACT, and New Zealand First coalition government was formed. We are now at the start of 2025, and the working class is suffering. Thousands of public sector workers have been sacked to pay for tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich. This class war is manifesting as smashed public services, the supportive functions of the state are being gutted so badly that the services they provide are greatly compromised. This doesn’t only force the working class further into poverty, it’s also dangerous: our disabled neighbours (and those caring for them) are receiving less material support, poorer public healthcare will lead to more deaths, and increased precarity of workers will lead to a rise in crimes of desperation. Public transport projects, climate initiatives, housing programs, education programs, and public healthcare, all on the chopping block. At the same time as these thousands of workers are being sacked and unemployment is skyrocketing, the government is taking its anti-worker sledgehammer to the welfare system. This extreme right-wing government is forcing us into unemployment, then viciously economically attacking us for being unemployed.
The government is demanding more obligations from people who require the jobseeker benefit, and increasing the punishments for those who miss these obligations. Just today, Minister Louise Upston has announced a slate of sanctions against the unemployed working class – new obligations to siphon away time and resources from jobseeking beneficiaries. This is in addition to existing punitive measures. Half of your benefit can be placed on a restricted payment card that can only be used at certain approved stores, to purchase approved “essential items” – but not rent. The jobseeker payment is only around $300. The vast majority of people on the benefit spend over 50% of their income on rent, so this punishment is potential eviction and homelessness. This ‘lenient’ sanction is only available for first-time obligation breakers. If you have missed an obligation within the last two years, your benefit can simply be cut off. If you want a sanction lifted or your benefit restored, you have the option to enter into unpaid work for a “to be specified” amount of time. If you’re thinking that sounds a bit like modern slavery, that might be because it is.
Disabled people’s welfare is also being slashed. As of the last term of government, it has been legal to pay disabled workers as little as $2 an hour, and the government would top the worker up to the minimum wage. The government is now ending this top-up program, casting vulnerable disabled workers into extreme poverty.
These attacks on the welfare system are the tip of the iceberg. It’s a sickeningly cruel strain of capitalist, right-wing policy. But of course they aren’t doing it for the sake of cruelty; they are doing it to serve their own class interests—to take from the poor and give to the rich, to take from the workers to give to the capitalists. We’re seeing rampant cuts to welfare, transport, healthcare and conservation to fund massive tax cuts for landlords and the rich. Part of the project of class war here is to manufacture desperation. By putting thousands upon thousands of workers out of their jobs and onto the welfare safety net and then proceeding to attack said safety net, they are adding to a section of the working class desperate enough to work for low pay and poor conditions. This reserve army of labour is required under capitalist society to keep wages down. Why would a boss pay you more if there are a hundred people lined up behind you to take your job? You don’t want to end up like one of them, do you? This is the goal of the capitalists; this is the goal of this coalition government: leverage market forces to keep workers desperate and fearful.
This is only the beginning. The government has made it clear that they will go further, cut deeper. Things will only get worse if we do not fight; wages will stall, poverty will rise, and the government will spin a wheel and pick a minority to blame it on. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s Māori! It’s queer people! It’s immigrants! Anything to divide our class. So we must fight back, we must organise and build solidarity and class consciousness. Division is their weapon, but class unity is our defence: the workers united can never be defeated. It is the working class who make the economy run, make the wheels turn; and so it is us who can shut the economy down. The government knows this – part of ACT’s programme is to chip away at union rights and weaken workplace organising.
For decades the political class have been attacking workers organisations like unions, which have been debilitated to the point where their operations and capacity are very limited. If the unions were ever to lead the workers in a general strike again, it would have to come from the rank and file members, not the union bureaucracy or paid organisers, but the members and the delegates. In the meantime, we must build a spirit of resistance among the working class, including the unemployed. For every attack on the workers, we must fight back. These struggles are the schools of revolution, participation necessarily teaches us lessons that theory alone cannot . So we’ll agitate, we’ll educate, we’ll organise, and we’ll disrupt this vile system.
