Aotearoa Politics and Protest: The State of the Nation

Kaakatarau Te Pou Kohere

11 July 2025

The following was presented as a talk at the 2025 International Socialist Organisation hui-ā-tau annual conference. A recorded version is available here: https://youtu.be/2J-5seh9FKU

Tēnā kautau o te Hāporikawa Angapaetua, greetings and salutations to the ISO, with special thanks to our branch in Pōneke for hosting our illustrious hui a tau. Kia kautau ngā mana, ngā reo, ngā kahui maunga, ngā wai horapa o te Whanganui a Tara, whakatau mai, whakatau mai, whakatau mai rā i runga i te kaupapa o te wā, ā, te ōhanga, te pūnaha, te oranga o te rohe whānui nei o Aotearoa Niu Tireni.

Let us not dither, then. We go on to the topic of the hour. The State of the Nation will provide an accounting of the economic situation, an analysis of some of the Coalition’s policies, examples of resistance, and an accounting of some parts of the geopolitical situation the New Zealand state navigates, the people of Aotearoa New Zealand live in, and some of the particulars involved.

This is an attempt at a Marxist analysis of Aotearoa New Zealand as it is today. Such an analysis provides us with a guide to the country’s developing situation. This perspective is not intended to be a blueprint of future events, it is not prophetic or particularly insightful. The intention is to convey the character of the general underlying processes taking place within New Zealand society so that we in the ISO are not caught out by events.

Perspectives take on heightened importance when the international situation is taken into account, with ever-increasing sharp turns and sudden changes in the trajectory of the world from defeated coups, mass action, and revolutions occurring in the imperial peripheries, all the while crises wrack the imperial core. Decisive understanding enables critical analysis, critical analysis begets proper planning, and proper planning begets effective action. Clear analysis provides a course of approach, a means of preparation through the writhing and ruin of the greatest calamities of our time. Failure to prepare is, after all, preparing to fail.

The Economic Situation

The world convulses with ever-escalating crises across myriad peoples and places. A pitiless bourgeois pursues an ever-shrinking margin of profit, neo-liberalism and state intervention to create competitive markets ossifying into totalitarian market monopolies, their needs either mediated by state intervention or capitalism maintained by state intervention to expand market competition. The markets themselves rip at covenants and environmental protections to cheapen access to resources, the great corporate vampires drawing the last drops of blood from a corpse that grows ever colder by the second.

Recession

If Tāmaki Makaurau’s branch huis’ increasing size means anything, it is that we are in a period of sharpened class struggle in New Zealand and of real material hardship. According to the Ratonga Whare Paremata Parliamentary Service, September 2024 saw the economy contract for the second consecutive quarter, with GDP falling by 1.0 percent. This followed a revised 1.1 percent decline in the June 2024 quarter.

Out of 16 industry groups, 11 experienced a reduction in value-added output during the September quarter, with the manufacturing and construction sectors leading the GDP decline. The business services sector also notably contributed to the overall economic downturn. On a per-capita basis, GDP has fallen for eight consecutive quarters, with a total decline of 4.8 percent in quarterly GDP per capita. Though there has been a 0.7 percent growth as of the fourth quarter, we are at most crawling out of recession. Certainly, a 0.7 percent growth after two years of decline hardly constitutes an economic recovery.^1,2

Employment

But what does this 4.1 percent decline mean in real terms? As the tremors of the Great American Buffalo ripple across the Pacific, the Coalition government has overseen a period of inflation, spiking the cost of living and a general sentiment of economic hardship especially among lowest lowest-income households. New Zealand’s unemployment rate has increased for seven straight quarters, reaching 5.1 percent in the December 2024 quarter. The number of unemployed individuals grew by 5 percent to 156,000 during this quarter. Employment numbers dropped by 0.1 percent, driven by a decline in full-time jobs, although part-time employment saw a 0.2 percent rise.

Craig Renney of the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) provides some context: Though the unemployment rate stayed at 5.1 percent, the number of people working full-time fell by 45,000 while the number working part-time increased by 25,000. Workers are making difficult choices, emerging in the patterns of employment as more and more people are entering a precarious state of work. Tough choices are being made across the width and breadth of the working class.³

The data demonstrates that 37,000 more people are unemployed than as of the 2023 election. Māori unemployment is now at 10.5 percent and Pacific unemployment is at 10.8 percent. Based on these numbers, of 156,000 unemployed people, over 50 percent of these are Māori and Pasifika. Employment fell in manufacturing, construction, retail, education, and health care. Total weekly gross earnings rose by less than inflation at 2.4 percent annually. 41 percent of workers saw no pay rise at all. A significant proportion of workers are unable to afford the cost of living in Aotearoa. Youth unemployment continues to rise. There are now 70,700 15 to 24-year-olds unemployed, and 96,600 are not in any form of employment, education, or training.

It must be recognised that the official unemployment rate do not include workers who are not actively searching for work. Discouraged workers who are not actively searching for work are thus not included in the official figures, leaving a potentially disparate gap in the actual unemployment rate compared to that which is recorded.

Inflation, Wages and Cost of Living

Inflation was driven by increases in rents (up 3.7 percent), rates (up 12 percent), household energy (up 7.2 percent) and insurance (up 8 percent). Grocery prices were also higher, rising 4.3 percent. Stats NZ recorded the average price of a block of butter in March at $7.33, up 10 percent from its December level of $6.66. In Woolworths the week this talk was presented (late May 2025), home brand butter was selling for $8.49. Radio New Zealand (RNZ) has offered a guide on how to make your own butter, as store-bought butter becomes increasingly unobtainable. The situation is a most torrid farce.

The CTU reports that earlier this year, the minimum wage rose by 1.5 percent – a full 1.0 percent less than actual inflation. This is the second year the Government has increased the minimum wage by less than inflation, which means that a full-time minimum wage worker is now cumulatively $2,438 worse off per year in real terms. Minimum wage workers are missing out on $28.36 a week because of the Government’s decisions.

Renney asserts that there is no plan to help these younger workers, and they are bearing the brunt of employment change with rising costs across the board. Students also deal with a myriad of austerity measures that our comrades have fought against with the Students Against Cuts movement.

In 2022, of the 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, New Zealand was sixth in the rankings for unemployment. We are now 18th.

General Sentiment⁴

An Ipsos Report from April 2025 qualifies this information with views from the people. 70 percent of the New Zealand population thinks that businesses making excessive profits are driving inflation. This sentiment has remained constant over the past four years, suggesting a (correct) perception among New Zealanders of corporate profiteering and its effects on consumer prices. Meanwhile, the proportion of New Zealanders who perceive workers demanding pay increases as a contributing factor has dropped significantly (46 percent in April 2025 compared to 53 percent in May 2024). This is not necessarily a reflection of an increase in class consciousness or that a revolution is right around the corner, but it is indicative of a growing knowledge of cause and effect within the system, where socialist messaging and education as a seed have fertile soil in which a revolutionary flower may yet bloom.

Health

Much like the foundations of our economy, there is a sickness that has festered in our health system. It would be a dismissive and reductive act to ignore the history of our health system and its developments; however, I do not have the expertise or experience to provide a just overview of all of the issues at hand. However, these statistics are broadly provided in the same vein as our economic overview. The current situation is untenable for health workers. The current health situation for much of the New Zealand public is dire.

In Dunedin last year, 35,000 or so people protested against funding cuts to a new hospital promised by the previous Labour government. Its “delivery” featured in National’s 2023 election campaign. The ageing hospital, which serves 300,000 people and provides a teaching facility for the Otago Medical School, is reported to leak and is infested with asbestos. The march attracted a quarter of the city’s population, mobilised in response to an announcement by the National Party-led government that the rebuild would be scaled back amid budget “blowouts.”

After Ministers Shane Reti and Chris Bishop said the rebuild would be impossible with the projected budget, Vital Healthcare Property Trust, a private company that builds and leases hospitals, including in Australia, was “putting its hand up” to anchor the Dunedin project. Fund manager Aaron Hockly told RNZ they would look at breaking up the build, acquiring part of it and leasing it back to the Government. “There’d be a whole range of contractual projections for the state, and essentially they would pay us rent,” he declared.

The privatisation “offer” emerges as the public health system faces a rapidly worsening crisis, including long-term underfunding, lack of staffing and unmet needs. In July, the Government replaced the board of Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora with a commissioner, former private hospital chief executive Lester Levy, who was tasked with making $1.4 billion in “savings,” to be achieved largely through what was then 1,600 job cuts. That has jumped to nearly 2,400 job cuts as of April 2025.

The situation in Dunedin offers a microcosm of the response to the many issues at hand. To describe our health system as simply in a state of crisis would be to imply that it has only just begun. Ultimately, even Right-wing pundits like Duncan Gardner are acknowledging decades of hollow platitudes and rising deaths across the country.

Waiting Lists⁵

Wait times for medical assessment, surgery, and other treatments are a nightmare for patients physically, emotionally, and financially These are broadly increasing in scope as Te Whatu Ora has broadly been left bereft of historical funding, staffing, political and logistical support, exacerbated by the Coalition government’s ongoing campaign of funding cuts under the guise of economic prudency.

Long wait times for first specialist assessments and treatments have been an issue in New Zealand even before the COVID-19 pandemic overstretched the health system. In January 2019 (before the first identified COVID-19 case), over 10,000 New Zealand patients were waiting longer than four months for their first specialist assessment (FSA).

Even so, COVID-19 added huge pressure. As the country stepped up its fight against the pandemic, other healthcare services were derailed. Many outpatient appointments and treatments, including elective surgeries, had to be deferred during lockdowns. Diagnostic scans, including MRIs, mammograms, and colonoscopies, were postponed or delayed.

The number of patients waiting more than four months for treatment tripled – from over 4,300 in January 2019 to over 11,900 by January 2021 (almost a year after the country’s first COVID-19 case), then to almost 33,000 by January 2022. As of January 2025, over 37,000 patients have been waiting more than the target period for their treatment and over 77,000 patients have been waiting 4 or more months for their FSA.

Several long-standing, growing concerns – such as insufficient funding and workforce shortages – were aggravated by COVID-19, compounded by burnout and low morale among the country’s medical professionals.

Chronic Underfunding

New Zealand’s core health expenditure has lingered below 7 percent of GDP since at least 2010, while comparable countries are averaging 12 percent of GDP. The budget allocation for public healthcare is not keeping up with demand or with inflation. Te Whatu Ora is requesting that immediate strategies be put in place to manage budget deficits and staffing shortages.

These budgetary constraints impact patient care and how quickly staffing shortages are filled. They also restrict or delay investments in maintaining and modernising public health facilities, increasing hospital beds, and purchasing vital medical equipment.

Staffing Shortages

Where we have ageing machines and few resources, the New Zealand health system also has an acute shortage of health professionals. Data released by Te Whatu Ora in July 2023 estimated the shortages at 1,700 doctors (including General Practitioners, and GPs), 4,800 nurses, 1,050 midwives, 220 oral health practitioners, and 200 anaesthetic technicians, among others.

A member survey by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) revealed that remuneration, workloads, and tight workplace conditions had driven many health professionals to consider opportunities outside the public health system. Some intended to emigrate, while others opted to stay in the country but focus on private practice. This strained staffing situation is expected to worsen over the next decade as healthcare demands increase, lengthening patient wait lists even more. The targeted cuts by this government on health are broadly aligned with a goal of privatisation.

Privatisation⁶

On March 7 this year, Minister of Health Simeon Brown delivered a speech to the BusinessNZ Health Forum that broadly admitted the Government is focusing on integrating the private sector into public healthcare. To quote:

I want to see Health NZ both lifting its own performance on elective surgeries, but also partnering closely with the private sector to ensure we can get on top of the waitlists and get Kiwis the operations they need as quickly as possible.

By partnering with the private sector, we can ensure people get the care they need, and Health New Zealand can achieve value for money through long-term contracts with the private sector.

The drive to privatisation is reflected in the choices made by health practitioners at a local and individual level due to the structural and targeted demolition of the Health sector. Government policy, aligning with the private sector and defunding the public sector, has ultimately created a financial incentive for more and more practitioners to go private or to emigrate. Aside from contributing to ballooning wait lists, the shortage of GPs and medical specialists also means that some areas don’t even have physicians, forcing patients and their families to travel up to 100 km just to see a doctor.

The health system during and prior to the John Key era suffered from what was popularly named the “postcode lottery”, prompting reform in the 2020s. Given that the District Health Boards (DHB) operated independently from one another at the time, the level of care differed depending on where patients lived and the state of their local DHB. If their DHB was in debt, their hospitals were full, or services were unavailable, patients couldn’t access care unless they moved to an area with a well-run and well-funded DHB.⁷

In April last year, Te Whatu Ora regions were asked to collectively save $105 million by July using “cost containment” methods, including banning double shifts, applying pressure to staff to take leave, non-replacement of sick staff, and wiping unfilled roles. Recruitment was paused on all hospital roles that are not patient-facing and all public health roles that are not community-facing as part of the cost-cutting. Though Te Whatu Ora claimed this would not affect front-line services, the ongoing consequences are ultimately reflected in the frustrations and low morale within health services.⁸

Burnout and low morale among health professionals

These challenging situations add to the pressure on many healthcare workers. In fact, surveys by ASMS found that work-related burnout remained high among senior medical and dental specialists. In the 2015 and 2020 surveys, 42 percent and 44 percent of respondents were experiencing work-related burnout. Respondents attributed this to workload pressures, long hours, resource constraints, COVID-19, and frustration with management and the system.

Ageing population

With nearly 17 percent of New Zealand’s population classified as ageing (estimated to rise to 24 percent or around 1.5 million people over the next 30 years), there is increasing demand for elective surgery such as joint replacements, long-term care for age-related chronic conditions, and other services in public hospitals. New Zealanders in the public healthcare sector are feeling the stress as more elderly patients wait too long to see a specialist to receive the treatment they need.

The state of New Zealand’s health system in 2025 reflects broader structural issues rooted in capitalist modes of production and governance. The sickness has metastasised. The Government’s solution isn’t to treat the cancer, but to cut limbs, and remove vital organs to save costs and laud efficiencies, as lives are not only lost but discarded. New viruses are cultured and take root with every budget, every deal, every compromise with power across successive governments.

Additionally, the prioritisation of digital infrastructure and pharmaceutical spending must be viewed holistically. Though digital infrastructure and pharmaceutical breakthroughs could be celebrated in the context of addressing needs, corporate interests are often prioritised rather than addressing the root causes of poor health, such as poor quality housing, insufficient incomes, and malnutrition. The “social determinants of health” are ultimately ignored, minimised, or used only as talking points in arguments for privatisation. Overall, the 2025 developments reflect the ongoing commodification of healthcare and the reproduction of class-based inequalities under capitalism.

Politics – Domestic and International

The Right Wing wave is crashing upon the rocks as the international working class witnesses the attack against their comrades in the USA. Tariffs spike the cost of living, and capital accumulation continues as the living standards of workers globally are under attack via austerity, whether under Right, Centre or Left-wing bourgeois parties.

Though pitiless social democrats and market liberals have carried the day in bourgeois elections in Canada and Australia, our own right-wing government maintains a course of economic opportunism. At the international level, there has been a qualitative change in the situation. Such a qualitative change at this level is, consequently, affecting the situation within Aotearoa New Zealand. Without a doubt, we are witnessing a transformation of capitalist developments since the end of the Second World War that has been prepared for, over this period, by the gradual accumulation of contradictions. Harrowing cracks appear in the so-called “international order” in the wake of ongoing genocide and the complete lack of action in resolving it.

Alas, the giant continues to be lulled to sleep, dreamless and aimless, as reformists and opportunists demand that action, the anger of the country, the outrage of the masses, be channelled into electoral politics. Let us then look at the electoral options.

The Coalition

The state of the Coalition from 2023 to 2025 reflects a continued alignment with capitalist class interests, particularly those of the real estate and large business sectors. After returning to power in the 2023 general election under the politically inept Christopher Luxon, the Coalition continues to pursue policies favouring deregulation, tax relief for high-income earners, and cuts to public services – measures consistent with a neoliberal agenda that reinforces capitalist hegemony all clouded in selective culture war narratives on the end of the smaller partners. Meanwhile, the National Party lurches to and fro, throwing up curtains of poor word salads while saying little at all.

The National Party, ACT, and New Zealand First represent a consolidation of bourgeois class power through parliamentary means. Elected on a platform of “fiscal responsibility” and “freedom,” the coalition’s agenda has primarily served the interests of capital by enacting sweeping public sector cuts, deregulation, and tax relief targeted toward the propertied classes. These policies have disproportionately harmed the working class through job losses, erosion of social services, and a weakening of labour protections, reinforcing the neoliberal logic that views workers as a cost to be minimised in the service of market efficiency and private profit. Profiteering is the agenda, and they are completely unapologetic about it.

The coalition has also engaged in a cultural and ideological offensive aimed at dismantling forms of collective resistance and undermining Indigenous sovereignty. ACT’s push for the Treaty Principles Bill, while ultimately defeated, symbolised an attempt to reassert settler-capitalist dominance over the constitutional status of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and to delegitimise Māori political aspirations by framing them as “separatist.” Meanwhile, the disestablishment of the Māori Health Authority and attacks on co-governance reflect a broader project of reinforcing a unitary state structure that masks the class and colonial contradictions embedded within it. New Zealand First’s cultural nationalism and ACT’s libertarianism have worked in tandem to reassert capitalist state authority while deflecting attention from class-based inequality.

While the coalition has so far managed to maintain internal cohesion, it remains a fundamentally unstable alliance of capitalist interests with divergent ideological projects: National serves corporate capital, ACT champions deregulated individualism, and New Zealand First promotes protectionist populism. This would make an uneasy truce, were it not held together, bound together, by a shared economic interest in disciplining labour and dismantling regulatory capital constraints. This united front of the Right Wing may fray as the 2026 election nears and each party jockeys to assert its distinct base. However, their economic interests will remain fundamentally aligned.

The Coalition exemplifies the capitalist state’s adaptability – utilising a blend of economic coercion, racialised narratives, and parliamentary legitimacy to enforce class dominance while maintaining the façade of democratic choice.

They are not popular. But I cannot emphasise this next point enough. We have to acknowledge that they have done this very effectively. They have leveraged a parliamentary majority with such speed that it largely proves they have the backing of our local bourgeois implicitly. Where Labour’s last election cycle was hobbled consistently in their political agendas and watered down much of their policy, the Coalition’s assault on Māori rights, worker rights, and disciplined adherence to their agenda has been an utter travesty. But this also reminds us of our general discussion at the ISO hui a motu in 2023: that there would be dire consequences to their election. We are unfortunately proven correct.

The unemployment rate has ultimately doubled since the 2023 election.⁸ It would be remiss not to acknowledge the direct connection to the vast layoffs and hiring freeze within the public sector. Ganesh Nana, former commissioner of the now-defunct Productivity Commission, and 14 other economists wrote to the prime minister and finance minister in November, warning their approach risked “a long-lasting hollowing-out” of business. Dare I say, it has hollowed out the country.

Between 2023 and 2025, New Zealand’s National-led coalition government, comprising also the ACT and New Zealand First parties, enacted several legislative measures that, from a Marxist class analysis perspective, reinforced capitalist class interests while adversely affecting the working class and marginalised communities.

The Coalition’s policies strengthen capitalist class rule, further baking the spirit of capitalist class domination into the letter of the law. It is as close to explicit as it can get before they start simply writing “Capital rulez, labour droolz”. Ultimately, the Coalition seeks to ensure all future governments will continue to abide by the measures they are putting in place now.

1. Protecting Capital from Democratic Pressure:

The Coalition’s broad aims are to ensure that all new legislation meets neoliberal criteria, sidestepping future democratic processes. An example of such, from the regulatory standards bill: new legislation must demonstrate “minimal interference in individual liberty” and be “market-consistent regulation.” The effect: privileging capitalist property rights and market logic over redistributive or protective regulations that could benefit workers. It restricts the scope of democratic governments to enact interventions that might challenge the accumulation of capital, such as environmental protections, rent controls, or workplace safety reforms, by framing them as “inefficient” or a “regulatory overreach.”

2. Institutionalising Neoliberalism:

The Coalition’s legislation is part of a broader ideological project to entrench neoliberal values within the state’s legal architecture. By hardwiring pro-market assumptions into the regulatory process, the bill limits future governments’ ability to pursue policies that might redistribute power or resources toward the working class, thereby reinforcing existing class structures.

3. Shifting the State’s Role:

Traditionally, the state under capitalism has had to make concessions to labour to maintain an appearance of legitimacy. Recent legislation largely weakens any illusion of mediation by promoting a “regulatory minimalism” that disproportionately favours business interests, explicitly locating the power to sign off on infrastructure projects in the hands of particular government ministers, almost like formalising the process of identifying who to bribe. This further entrenches the state’s role as a manager of capital’s long-term interests It entrenches this dynamic to such a degree as to effectively remove any facade of institutional neutrality.

4. Chilling Effect on Progressive Legislation:

By requiring all new laws to pass a test of “regulatory reasonableness” grounded in economic liberalism, the bills and acts deter radical or redistributive legislation. It creates a structural bias against laws that seek to challenge capitalist relations, such as union protections, living wage mandates, or stronger tenant rights, on the basis that they introduce “unjustifiable burdens” on businesses. Environmentalism, Māori rights, gender equality, aged support, and disability rights are all ultimately at the mercy of economic liberalism.

Historically, this bodes ill for us all.

The above offers examples of the intensified efforts to discipline labour through restrictions on union power and a rollback of progressive industrial reforms introduced by the previous Labour government. The National Party’s rhetoric of “fiscal responsibility” masked the deepening of class stratification, as working-class and marginalised communities bore the brunt of austerity measures. The Coalition, despite the unabashed dismissal Luxon’s partners have for him, functions as the political expression of the capitalist class, managing the state apparatus to secure the conditions for capital accumulation while undermining proletarian interests and despite such massive attacks on the working class, are still polled to potentially win a second election come 2026, at a slightly reduced majority of 63 seats rather than the 67 they have currently⁹ according to an RNZ-Reid research poll from March 2025.

The Coalition serves as a tool for class entrenchment. In the vein of the Treaty Principles Bill, the Coalition offers a stolid, determined codification of capitalist hegemony into law, insulating capital from future democratic or working-class challenges at the electoral and legislative level, and shackling any legal resistance within the bureaucracy or judiciary. The terms and conditions of society are being rewritten. What do our heroes in parliament have to say on the matter?

The Parliamentary Opposition

The New Zealand Opposition parties from 2023 to 2025 – principally the Labour Party, Te Pāti Māori, and the Green Party – largely continue to function within the bounds of bourgeois parliamentary politics, offering limited systemic challenge to capitalist hegemony despite rhetorical opposition and promises talking to radicalism. Following its defeat in the 2023 general election, the Labour Party entered a period of internal reassessment, though there is little evidence of a substantive leftward shift in strategy.

Labour MPs criticised the Fast-Track Approvals Bill for concentrating decision-making power in the hands of ministers, potentially leading to conflicts of interest and reduced public input. Environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking likened the bill to “Muldoonist” policies, expressing concern over political influence in consenting decisions. She questioned, “What are the interests of those ministers, and who is influencing those ministers to get these things through?” MP Arena Williams warned that the bill could erode democratic checks and balances, stating it “represents a view that economic development will only happen at the expense of environmental protections and democratic input.”¹²

The Pay Equity Amendment Bill faced strong opposition from Labour MPs, who argued it would hinder efforts to achieve equal pay for women. Workplace relations spokesperson Jan Tinetti condemned the bill, stating, “National has forced through a law change that will take money out of women’s pockets.” She further criticised the process, noting the legislation was rushed through under urgency without proper consultation. Labour leader Chris Hipkins accused the government of “sacrificing equal pay for women in order to balance the budget.”¹³

MP Duncan Webb posted on his LinkedIn page in November 2024, writing:

The Regulatory Standards Bill is dangerous in that, under the guise that it simply seeks to streamline regulatory processes and improve efficiency and transparency, it is seeking to do two radical things. First, place constraints on the power of the government to intervene in the affairs of citizens. Second, orient regulation-making to prioritise property rights and individual freedoms. Ultimately, its aim is to roll back the state.

We need to cast our mind back and ask ourselves what the costs of deregulation have been in the past – leaky buildings, Pike River, migrant exploitation, finance company collapses, fatalities in adventure tourism, and more.¹⁰

Labour, when they summon forth the ghost of radicalism, railing against austerity measures and underfunding, remains focused on technocratic “common sense” governance rather than structural transformation, reinforcing its role as a party of social-liberal compromise rather than any hope of channelling class struggle.

Te Pāti Māori has intensified its advocacy for tino rangatiratanga and decolonial praxis, with initiatives that increasingly intersect with class politics, particularly as Māori communities disproportionately face precarity and labour exploitation. In May 2024, the party issued Te Ngākau o Te Iwi Māori, a Declaration of Political Independence, proposing the establishment of a Māori Parliament grounded in tikanga and kawa, asserting that “no longer can we allow this very house to dictate our rangatiratanga.”

A pivotal moment that captured the public imagination occurred in November 2024 when Te Pāti Māori MPs Rawiri Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke performed a haka in Parliament with Labour MP Peeni Henare to protest the Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to redefine the Treaty of Waitangi. This act of defiance led to their suspension, marking the harshest disciplinary action in New Zealand’s parliamentary history. The bill was ultimately defeated in April 2025, following widespread public opposition, including the largest protest on Māori rights in the nation’s history.¹¹

Te Pāti Māori’s effectiveness in challenging the material conditions of Māori workers depends on its ability to forge solidarity with broader anti-capitalist movements. Te Pāti Māori has emerged as a more radical opposition voice in comparison to Labour, particularly in response to the coalition government’s attacks on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the dismantling of Māori institutions such as Te Aka Whai Ora. Te Pāti Māori’s resistance could signal a potential convergence between indigenous self-determination and class politics, especially where Māori are disproportionately affected by precarity and labour exploitation. However, the lack of a coherent program on class questions or a coherent analysis of the question of the settled state raises many concerns about its delivery of radical policy, let alone radical social transformation. Like Labour, they ultimately cling to the parliamentary electoralism they claim to reject, also pushing for voters to vote rather than for any street-level mobilisations, aside from the occasional haka on parliament’s steps.

However, there must be an honest acknowledgement that Te Pāti Māori is actively challenging the parliamentary processes themselves, no matter how performatively.

The Green Party have continued to articulate a progressive agenda on climate justice, social welfare, and inequality, often highlighting the ecological costs of the coalition’s deregulatory agenda. Despite party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick’s declaration of pushing a grassroots, community-focused advocacy for policies such as wealth taxes and green investment, the Greens are insufficiently confrontational toward capital accumulation.

Though there has been a menagerie of issues that faced the Greens over the past two years, including scandals from multiple sitting MPs, there is a general commitment emerging to widen the voter base outside of a few progressive suburbs. The Greens are one of the more transparent parties that largely attempt to stick to their principles. Their budget, laudable in the sweeping benefits to many of the poorer of our society, and directly attacking the wealthy through an admittedly populist “private jet tax”, remains constrained by their orientation toward legislative reform within the capitalist state rather than mobilising mass working-class resistance, largely moving in the same current as Labour. They want to reform the system, but they will not break it, though there are MPs and candidates that may potentially have the stomach for more radical action, especially with co-leader Chloe Swarbrick’s attendance at a variety of rallies on topics from Palestine to occupations in the Far North. And yet, we cannot ignore that their “Green Budget” slogan seems to echo our own, as if in a distorted mirror. “A better world is possible; let us show you how.” I think a vanguard party the Greens are not.

Politics of Opposition – Social Protest and Reactions

Over the last year, from June 2024 and on into 2025, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen a wave of mass mobilisations that should be recognised as grassroots, flaxroots, expressions of community self-organisation. Naturally, we see them here as an expression of discontent across many parts of the community, the nerves and tendons of the giant I mentioned earlier. Many are organised attempts at resistance to the intensification of capitalist and state power, especially when we consider the growth in occupation movements in Te Ao Māori.

There has been a convergence of protests against the Treaty Principles Bill, for Palestinian solidarity, in defence of environmental protections, and preemptive action against corporate exploitation. Unions and workers provide opposition to attacks on labour rights like the Pay Equity Amendment Act, which broadly reflects a growing popular backlash against policies that serve ruling class interests while undermining indigenous sovereignty, ecological integrity, and working-class livelihoods. The massive Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti and rallies led by Māori communities against the Treaty Principles Bill represented not only a defence of tino rangatiratanga but have a real potential to offer a broader challenge to the bourgeois state’s attempt to redefine foundational social contracts with and against Indigenous communities in service of neoliberal revisionism.

Likewise, resistance to the Fast-Track Bill and the rollback of pay equity provisions again highlights how the capitalist state prioritises extraction and profit over worker security and environmental stewardship.

These events underscore a period of heightened civic engagement in New Zealand, reflecting widespread public concern over indigenous rights, environmental protection, and labour equity. People recognise that the situation is deteriorating. They are actively working against this government and its program. These struggles, though often fragmented along cultural, environmental, and labour lines, illustrate an opportunity for a multi-sectoral front against the Coalition’s program – yet, more importantly, these movements also expose the absence of a unified revolutionary programme capable of confronting the systemic roots of oppression in Aotearoa.

Conclusion: Hope, against all odds. The struggle goes on

In sum, while elements within the Opposition in parliament and on the streets express dissent against the ruling bloc, they largely operate within a framework that seeks to humanise capitalism, arguing for a more robust and rational series of checks and balances rather than seeking to overthrow it. This reflects the broader limitations of electoral politics in delivering class emancipation and the lack of a cohesive, revolutionary spine across the diverse body of the working class of Aotearoa.

Demands for workers and the wider public to vote themselves out of this situation and repeal the government’s policies ring hollow in the wake of the absolute domination of the bureaucratic legislative process demonstrated by the Coalition. There are leaks. Brave comrades in the public service resist in their own small revolts. But there will be no victory in the actions of the few. The Unions prevaricate.

The economy is shaken and will not be recovering anytime soon. Radical politics will do well in this time; however, that goes as much to reactionary forces as it does to progressive communists. The health system is a zombie, its coffin is being prepared, and the nails are digging in. The Coalition stands, scythe out and ready to reap what they have sown and usher in a privatised health system on a road built of the dead, scarred, and dying. The workers involved are aware of this precarious unlife, barely keeping the organs functioning as some flee and many break under the pressures. I can only salute as they work into the dark night.

Despite clear tensions in the personalities (or lack thereof in some cases) of the Coalition heads, barring a significant crisis beyond that caused by their policies, a significant upswell in self-directed worker resistance, or an unprecedented crisis that shakes the foundations of the state, it appears the Coalition is likely to hold together into the 2026 elections and may, indeed, carry them. The opposition refuses to organise anything other than token rhetoric and appeals for votes. The attack on Māori, the ongoing culture wars peddled by ACT and New Zealand First, the rising cost of living, the degradation of healthcare… The three-headed ogre hasn’t been choking us slowly. It has hidden every strike behind another, toeing the line between political theatre and ruthless parliamentary expediency.

We may be in the night. Our strength fails us, and there is no cohesion in the lines. Genocide continues in Gaza, and fascism descends in Washington. Beijing and Moscow loom large in the shadows. A harsh, cold winter blows onto our shores. Yes, e te minenga, who am I to claim otherwise? The truth, the harshest, coldest of truths: that shit is not going well. The people live under the same tyran vice, this cruel fist that cracks down on us every day. We are shackled, comrades. We are shackled.

Yet still, though the night is long, and the dark is harrowing, we will not be kept warm by the smouldering ashes of tradition draped over cold stone halls of the Capitalist fortress. Our agency is snatched away, not by a foreign king or a distant governor. Not by the boards of the conglomerate Fonteras or any of the Big Four. Inaction guarantees defeat, for surrender is the end of the struggle.

He aha tēnei mea o Hatana, this great act of expropriation, the mass enslavement of the minds and souls of our peoples. Capitalism is a ngārara, in the pits of our stomachs and the notches of our throats. From the pollution of the Earth, Sea, and Skies, to the corruption and commodification of our spirits and bodies.

But we cannot forget that, in short, communists everywhere support every revolutionary social movement against this existing social and political order. In all these movements, we bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. Where labour everywhere is subordinate to the whims of capital, to the seduction of reformism. Cowed by baton and bullet, the fetters of a better life built on the backs of the enslaved across the world.

There is a growing consciousness of the working body in Aotearoa, its sinews and muscles materialising in occupied mines and anti-genocide marches, as it blinks, blearily, as if awakening to itself for the first time in a very long time. There is a sleeping giant across the width and breadth of our islands, across the oceans, and beyond.

Communists have no desire to conceal our views and aims. We openly declare that our ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. These moments of defiance will down the walls, a chip at a time, a brick here, mortar there, until a world united, brings them down. Every crack will echo into the night, and with it will come a dawn of our own making.

Comrades, the proletarians have nothing to lose but our chains. The giant must awake. We have a world to win.

References

Aotearoa Politics and Protest: The State of the Nation

Kaakatarau Te Pou Kohere

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