The far right in the 2023 general election

Amongst the parties who vied for our votes in Aotearoa’s October 2023 general election, not a single one represented the working class against capitalism. However, this does not in any way mean all of the options were equally bad or that the various potential outcomes of the election were irrelevant. Beyond the obvious battle between […]

The Labour Party loses the election: What is to be done?

This was an election that Labour contrived to lose. The most dramatic shift in party support was the drop in the Labour vote from 50 percent in 2020 to towards half of that this time. Every other party gained. Labour lost votes to the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, which demonstrates that Labour managed to […]

Vote Green or Te Pāti Māori, and Build a Socialist Alternative

Marama Davidson & Debbie Ngārewa-Packer

The International Socialist Organisation’s position on the general election, in line with a decision at a membership conference, is summed up in the slogan: ‘Keep National Out, and Build a Socialist Alternative.’ The implication is to give the party vote to Labour, the Greens or Te Pāti Māori. In this opinion piece Grant Brookes puts […]

The Limits of Parliamentary Politics

Ballot box

Earlier this year, when Christopher Luxon ruled out working with Te Pāti Māori after the election, he justified his position by saying, “we believe in one person, one vote. We believe that we are all equal citizens and equal under the law.” Despite the alarming lack of awareness from a Leader of the Opposition – […]

What Happened to Fair Pay Agreements?

FPA

Labour’s 2017 election manifesto commitment to introduce industry-wide Fair Pay Agreements was, arguably, the party’s most radical policy. The idea was to set national terms and conditions for groups of unorganised, low-paid workers – cleaners, security guards and the like  – which would put an end to the race to the bottom by the employers. […]

A Nasty Right Wing

Luxon and Seymour

In the 2023 election, the National Party faces a situation that it hasn’t faced in its 87-year history: a serious challenger to their right. Under David Seymour’s leadership the ACT Party has grown consistently in strength. No longer content with being a minor party, ACT leader David Seymour stated to the New Zealand Herald in […]

Te Pāti Māori

Te Pāti Māori Logo

On the morning of Saturday, 10 July 2004, I caught the train from Wellington out to Kāpiti, walked from the station to Highway 1 and stuck out my thumb. A couple of months earlier, I had marched the final leg of the 40,000-strong hīkoi opposing the Labour Government’s confiscation of the foreshore and seabed, and […]

Keep National Out, and Build a Socialist Alternative

Ballot box

What a contrast between the politics we need and the politics on offer this election! The world is being ravaged by forest fires and devastating floods, and yet all the parliamentary parties’ plans for climate change are so slow, and so timid. They will not confront the vested interests – in farming, roading and building […]

Labour: Stop Pretending and Actually Fund Tertiary Education!

Aotearoa’s universities are under threat. In October 2022, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) vice-chancellor Damon Salesa announced an intent to cut 170 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff across a range of academic areas (Morton, 2022). 90 staff accepted voluntary redundancy before AUT was knocked back by the Employment Relations Authority, forcing the university to commence […]

Inflation Crisis: This is Class War

Price inflation

The jury is out on whether in Aotearoa, and around the world, an economic recession will be the sequel to the period of high inflation we are experiencing at present. Monetarist economic orthodoxy is being deployed by the government to engineer an economic slowdown. In Aotearoa Gross Domestic Product shrank fractionally in this year’s March […]