ALTERNATIVE AOTEAROA :THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

While talk might be of 'the new normal', one thing that hasn't changed is the New Zealand left's relationship with the Labour Party. And that's a problem.

ONE OF THE MAJOR PROBLEMS with much left wing protest and activity in New Zealand is that it is invariably linked to the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party. There's a reason why, suddenly, nothing much of protest occurs in an election year and when something does happen its more of a slap on Labour's wrist rather than a good swift blow to its solar plexus.

Even thirty years after Roger Douglas told David Lange that 'he had some really good ideas' he wanted to implement as finance minister, much of the left has continued to support the Labour Party regardless. Any organisational response to this fundamentally and irretrievably centre-right political party remains fundamentally compromised.

So an event calling itself Alternative Aotearoa might look promising at first glance but appearances can be deceiving. Billed as a one day seminar to discuss 'the environmental, social and economic transformation of Aotearoa', the two keynote speakers are Laura O'Connell Rapora, Director of the Labour Party -friendly Action Station, and Labour Auckland City Councillor Efeso Collins.

The fact that this event is being held a mere two months from the election suggests that all will come out of this seminar is a series of policy demands the participants want to see a second term Labour-led Government implement. Indeed devoted and loyal Labour Party supporter Martyn Bradbury has written:

'I am excited that there will be a Progressive NZ Left conference in July that will bring together the smartest minds from across the Progressive NZ Left spectrum to thrash through a solutions based policy platform that we can take to the Government and rally around.'

But the problem is not that the left doesn't have any good ideas or any policies already. The problem is that it lacks a political vehicle to promote and popularise those ideas and policies. While most of the talk is about the economic crisis we're sinking into, not a whole lot is being said about the political crisis that we're also in. That's the crisis of a representative democracy that is neither representative or democratic. It is little wonder that some 750,000 no longer vote when the free market and neoliberalism wins everytime.

This seminar though suggests that Labour is receptive to a progressive economic and political agenda. But, in reality, all it is interested in is maintaining the economic and political status quo. It says something about the entrenched conservatism of much of the New Zealand left , not to mention its intertwined organisational ties with the Labour Party, that it continues to promote the fiction that Labour Party can be a vehicle for progressive policies. Its almost as if its still living in 1983 and Rogernomics hasn't happened yet. 

If this seminar  was really interested in an Alternative Aoteoaroa it would not be peddling delusions about the Labour Party. Then we might start to get somewhere.