It is crunch time.
The next five days may determine who is the next Government.
My personal view, which will not be a surprise, is that we need to replace the current regime as soon as possible.
My reasons include:
- They are crap economic managers. They have managed to increase Government debt and unemployment at the same time while claiming to be economic wizards and touting the creation of 220,000 jobs. Some time in the future however and the figure involves some pretty impressive spin.
- They are awful for the climate. Every policy choice they have had they have chosen the more retrograde option. 71 distinct decisions at the last count …
- They are shocking on race relations and have chosen all sorts of culture wars against Te Tiriti, basically for political advantage. At a time when more and more kiwis appreciate and celebrate Te Ao Maori they want to drag us back to the 1950s.
- They have deliberately chosen to disenfranchise tens of thousands of kiwis to improve their chances of re-election. Donald Trump would approve.
- They have engaged in a full on assault on the environment, either for weird culture wars reasons or to appease their donors. The fast track regime is the most corrupt New Zealand government process I have ever seen.
- They despise the poor and have replaced the Labour ethos of giving a hand up with giving a punch down on those doing worse than most of us.
There are many more reasons, more than I can describe in a short post.
But here is the issue.
Electoral enrolments on young people are down on last time and from Labour Day no further enrolments will be possible. Young people who have a vested interest in the future tend to vote left. Their values are more tuned into sustainability and not the day to day exercise of maximising personal gain.
Their disenfranchisement could cost the left a couple of seats. And in an incredibly tight election this could be the difference between winning and losing.
So if you want to change the Government make sure you and your whanau especially the young are enrolled to vote.
And remember. If people are not enrolled by Sunday the 25th of October their vote will not count.
We probably have five days left to change the Government. Let’s do this.
Great reminders thankyou Mickey.
My workplace is about as enrolled as you can be. I will be hustling them all to vote.
Take a tip from Alex the cartoon money manager in the City of London from The Telegraph, still keeping alive and kicking. He knows that money and maneuvring it, keeping up personal pretensions is paramount (he gets agents from human resources agencies to phone FTTT and make him high offers to ensure his employers know he's on to it and in demand.)
https://www.alexcartoon.com/index.cfm (And read the background history under, it's good. Also About the strip at the top which sizes up the decades for Alex and us.)
But then if you are in touch with whole life and the fact that the community is the maker of it, and want to continue but regain and repair functions lost which would ensure its future you will think differently at the election.
You will sigh and laugh at Alex and vote for the people who will show the best effort possible to keep society and the country working in all meanings – through difficult times, storms, floods, landslips, loss of water and crops, disease, ailments and perhaps nuclear explosions.
And know if the community doesn't work together and keep the systems needed going, it will fall apart in dramatic and extremely uncomfortable ways.