The Fight Is On!

The coalition reacts badly to the prospect of defeat.

There's room at the top, they are telling you still
But first, you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

Song: John Lennon.

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I wanted to see two things from Labour over the weekend: a bit of mongrel and some old-style socialism from a hero of the working people. Both were present.

Leader Chris Hipkins said, “Neoliberal trickle-down economics is a hoax”, and issued a rallying cry of “The fight is on!” to deliver “A Fair Go for everyone”.

Watching the highlights of Hipkins’ keynote speech at the Labour Party conference, my first thought was that it was bread-and-butter stuff and surely wouldn’t be too controversial. Yet the coalition representatives howled on 1 News as if he’d just announced that, under Labour, we were going to have one more Covid lockdown to knock the virus on its head before the worst of the winter.

Of course, Chippy didn’t do that; his announcement was classic Labour, supporting businesses in taking on young people as apprentices and setting them on their way in life. Something the coalition should have supported, yet they watered down the Labour initiative they inherited even as youth unemployment reached its highest level in decades.

The coalition’s message was “Don’t Vote Labour”, and in the absence of policies of their own, they sought to discourage voters from supporting an alternative by painting Labour as the bogeyman under the bed, even when proposing a policy whose need is as obvious as the diarrhoea of disinformation coming from Simeon Brown.

National’s campaign manager, Simeon, sought to cast doubt as to how Labour would pay for the scheme, which I find mind-boggling. In what world is it better to have young people languishing without opportunity than to get them into apprenticeships? But things were about to get worse, and I posted:

Watching 1 News, and I was just thinking what a creep Simeon Brown is, and then Stuart Nash came on.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said Labour was copying their apprenticeship policy, but Stuart Nash failed to get the memo, and the man who was kicked out of Labour, but apparently sees himself as the party’s true soul, had the cheek to say “this Labour Party does not represent the values of Michael Joseph Savage, Peter Fraser, and Walter Nash”.

I wondered what those three men would have made of Stuart Nash’s recent description of a woman, which I won’t repeat.

Dorothy wrote, “As I watched that clip, Stuart Nash talked about old Labour political values and mentioned Walter Nash as one of those holding those values. Personally, I think Walter Nash, as Stuart Nash's grandfather, would rise up from his grave and ask his grandson what the hell he thought he was talking about.”

Diana said, “Where do they find these people? They are like orc extras from LOTR.” Although I wasn’t clear whether she meant the NZ First candidates or their crowd.

David commented, “Just when you think they've reached the bottom of the barrel, someone says, ‘Hey! Where does that hatch go?”

Which brings us to ACT, which had two things to announce at its own conference:

1. They made the gun lady their new deputy leader, selected from an extremely modest talent pool.

2. For goodness sake, don’t vote Labour; they don’t even believe in neoliberal trickle-down as an economic approach

ACT appoints firearms spokesperson as deputy leader.

Dorothy wrote, “Nicole McKee said once she got involved in gun safety when she was teaching wahine to hunt for food. Wouldn't it be better to fight for a country where wahine don't need to go out hunting for food? Better jobs, better wages, better healthcare, better education chances. Aren't those better targets than hunting venison and pigs?”

Josephine said, “The ACT Party goes from bad to worse,” although it is difficult to compare the unsuitability of promoting a gun lobbyist in the wake of March 15 with someone who wanted to abolish Health and Safety regulations for workers and fair pay for women.

To be honest, my main concern about guns is having them anywhere near the basement-dwelling hate trolls that support ACT.

Things went from bad to worse as they delivered their 2026 platform, which was essentially “Don’t Vote Labour”. I posted:

ACT’s slogan is “Lock Labour Out”? How bereft of ideas must you be to campaign by saying “Don’t vote for the other guy”? They sounded like Trump saying “Lock Her Up.”

To be fair, ACT did announce some policies alongside their anti-Labour message, promising:

• All health and disability benefits would be issued independently by a Ministry of Social Development-approved pool of designated doctors; this is currently optional, but ACT would make it compulsory.

• Electronic money management for jobseeker recipients who remain on a benefit for more than four months, which would allow spending on groceries, rent, childcare and other essentials, with alcohol, gambling, tobacco and cash withdrawals all banned.

• The reduction of 43 government departments to 19 and cutting 28 ministers to just 18. The Public Service Commission would be abolished.

David Seymour at the Act Party pre-election rally in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell.

Seymour wasn’t only bagging Labour, he also said of Te Pāti Māori, “the best they could do for Māori is a haka on TikTok.”

Of the Greens, he said, “Then there’s Business Class Chloe from the Greens, who works with Labour. They’ve done about as much for the environment as the Māori Party has for Māori.”

Paddy wrote, “Seems like National’s and ACT’s election strategy is focused on another party. Imagine going into a job interview and focusing entirely on another candidate’s negative aspects.

Um. And what do you have to offer?”

Halina said, “They’re all very threatened by Labour, for good reason.”

Luxon, Hipkins, and Peters. Image: BeFunky.

So what do we have? An energised Labour Party that has been grinding in low gear but is really picking up momentum, or parties devoid of ideas whose only appeal to voters is to vote against the other guy, the one who is focused on getting this country working again.

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Have a good Monday, folks, and take care, all you lovely people.

Ngā mihi,
Nick.

To end today is John Lennon’s great track “Working Class Hero”.