David Cormack
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You put your left toe in
🕑 Added 2021-05-30 04:28:22 +0000 UTCPlease don't take your left toe out.
As far as I can remember, that was the most left-wing budget in my lifetime.
The bit that most people took out was the increase to the benefit. Up by a max of $55 per week come next year. That's an increase of less than $3,000 per person so it's not mind-blowingly huge but when you're living on the poverty line, every bit counts.
There was a bit of noise from some groups that the budget didn't do anything for the middle class, but I think the middle class have been doing ok. Especially the house-owning middle class who has seen that asset balloon in value.
A lot of the messaging from the Government about the budget was undoing Ruth Richardson's 'Mother of All Budgets' and the uber-neoliberal damage that the 1991 budget begat.
Both the PM and the Finance Minister kept invoking the Mother of all Budgets — before announcing spending increases in benefits, student allowances, Māori health, housing and education, and more money for capital expenditure on hospitals and schools, it was red meat to those of us on the left.
While the increase to the jobseeker benefit is nowhere near enough to allow beneficiaries to live in dignity, and there is still so much more to do, we should applaud Labour for at least taking a step in the left direction.
And the response has been almost a collective shrug and a "well of course", from the electorate. This should encourage Labour.
Hot on the heels of announcing what is actually a very radical fair pay agreement policy, Labour has now dipped its toes into more left politics. And there has been no allergic reaction from the electorate. Both polls in the last month had National still in the 20s and Labour in the high 40s.
While the most recent poll has Labour requiring a coalition partner to govern, I don't think many people are expecting them to have a majority on their own after the next election.
The other thing this budget did was something I'm super stoked with and has had little to no fanfare.
From Budget 2022 onwards, the government will recycle the revenue generated from the auctioning of Emissions Trading Scheme allowances into emissions reductions programmes. This makes reducing emissions an easier sell. It's something James Shaw has been beavering away at for a while now and so getting a commitment from Labour to doing it merits applause for James.
Ka Pai James.
All of this good left stuff was somewhat negated by what sounded like the beginnings of a shit house immigration reset, focusing on "high skills" and "high value" immigrants. These are basically racist terms. In fact our immigration policy is so racist that not even the Republicans would countenance it when it was floated by Trump.
If we want to keep dragging Labour left, we should adopt the toddler principle. Applaud them when they start doing something good, which in my view this budget is.
So to all those Labour MPs who subscribe to me, you done good. I'm proud of you. More please. Just keep going. Let's do this. Be kind.
Comments
m3me_fr0g
If you think skills based immigration is racist I don't even know what to say. What is racist about wanting our immigration to be in the form of doctors, nurses and builders instead of fruit pickers and restaurant managers?
m3me_fr0g
The missing middle lose out again. I don't know why people say the middle class are missing out: it's the working class that get nothing. The same people that have had any prospect of home ownership taken away from them, whose wages have been worn away to barely above minimum wage by minimum wage rising so much, who work but are still poor. They get nothing. Isn't the Labour party meant to be working for workers? It's right there in the name. When did it become the party of beneficiaries and the champagne socialist middle class? That's the green party... If people wanted this budget they'd have voted for a Labour-Green coalition, wouldn't they? I think a majority going to the red party with Labour in its name would be a mandate for a working man's budget that did things like increase funding for the police to deal with the gangs and more funding for the commerce commission to deal with our supermarket duolopoly and all the other duopolies making our cost of living unbearable for working people. A budget bringing back the Ministry of Works so we people could work and earn their money from the government by building houses and public transport we sorely need.
