Jordan Carter is a Wellington-based List candidate
John Key’s rather wooden performances in the leaders’ debates so far, are consistent with his vision for New Zealand. A country painted bright grey, where everyone is “ambushus” for — well, nothing much really, except power in Key’s case.
Through the whole election campaign, Labour has stood up for New Zealand and the country we can be: a place where everyone can work at a decent job on decent wages, where the environment is clean and protected, and where we respect and look after each other, rather than creating false divides between Kiwis.
The policy framework we have rolled out is a plan that will tackle long-standing problems the country faces. It’ll fix the things that hold us back: unfair taxes, biased investment into speculation, a lack of skilled and trained workers, housing shortages and so on.
But it’s the frank appeal to what it means to be a New Zealander that is exciting about Labour’s campaign.
Stopping asset sales is part of that, but think back to the other bits of recent political history: “gone by lunchtime” on New Zealand’s nuclear free (Brash, who Key is trying to disinter from his political grave); the effort to get mining done on Schedule 4 lands; the attacks on people on benefits; the pegging in of people’s rights at work; the “it’s not a priority” message to diverse communities all around New Zealand.
Their whole effort is to diminish and undermine the things that make us who we are, and to turn us into a privatised, corporatised bunch of Klingons who are only consumers, never citizens, and where to have a different ambition or even a different opinion is to be something other than “mainstream”.
National and John Key are running a grey campaign and their vision of our country is grey to match. They are avoiding the tough issues, have no plan to change the economy or protect our environment, and just haven’t got what it takes to let every New Zealander get ahead — and to look after the people who can’t.
There is more to us than that. We are a better country than that. We don’t need a bright grey future. We need one where everyone can fly.
