THE LABOUR PARTY IS NOT REFORMABLE

People lining up at an Auckland food bank earlier this year.

A second-term Labour Government will be little different from the present Labour-led Government. Unfortunately the Labour-aligned left are still peddling the fiction that the Labour Party is reformable.

AS THE GENERAL election draws nearer the obsession with opinion polls, at least among The Commentariat, becomes ever more obsessive. The last two polls, with widely different results, provided enough material for a couple of news cycles at least. The speculation was rife. Will Labour be able to form a majority government? Is the future looking bleak for National? Are New Zealand First out for the count? Will the Green Party manage to keep its head above the five percent eligibility line? And blah blah blah...

For the more thoughtful, the lack of any real discussion about policy has been a source of some consternation. The problem for the political establishment though is any such discussion will again highlight that the similarities between the parties are far more numerous than the differences. With the parliamentary parties in agreement that there is no alternative to 'the market' we are left with absurd situations like the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and his National Party counterpart Paul Goldsmith each insisting that their party is the true 'party of infrastructure' (Robertson's own description).

In such an ideologically barren environment its little wonder that this election is going to be a slugfest between Saint Jacinda and Crusher Collins. Its a no-contest according to some Labour Party supporters. That's because Jacinda Ardern walks around encased in an angelic glow while casting out demons from among her grateful flock while grumpy old Crusher Collins spends her days pulling the wings off flies. Okay, I made the stuff up about Collins but Jacinda Ardern loyalist Chris Trotter has suggested that Ardern is the embodiment of 'applied Christianity' Hallelujah!

But after the charade is over and the rosettes and the streamers have been packed away, we're still going to be left with another neoliberal government. Some on the Labour left (and I use that term in the broadest sense) are at least aware of the danger that a second-term Labour (led) government could well look like the first term Labour Government. A couple of weeks ago Labour supporters and sympathisers met in Wellington for 'Alternative Aotearoa'. It was a one day seminar designed to thrash out some alternative policy proposals that could be presented to an incoming Labour Government.

The publicity reads:

'Our main political parties, heavily influenced by corporate priorities, are keen for New Zealand to return to “business as usual” as soon as possible whereby a smaller group of wealthier people can continue to enjoy the benefits of economic development at the expense of the rest of the country....If we go back to “business as usual” we will simply carry forward the myriad of social, environmental and economic problems from the pre-pandemic era, in particular the shocking levels of poverty and inequality which have disproportionately damaged Maori and Pasifika whanau and entire low-income communities.'

We can't dispute that Alternative Aotearoa was well-intentioned but it still was based on the disastrous premise that the Labour Party is still somehow reformable and that it can be nudged away from 'business a usual' and toward something more progressive. Despite that the cold fact that the Labour Party has been a champion of neoliberalism for the past three decades , they still see the Labour Party as an arena of struggle for an alternative society. I don't know who they think is going to do their fighting for them. Greg O'Connor? Stuart Nash?

If the participants at Alternative Aotearoa think that a second-term Labour (led)-Government is going to put forward a bold programme of economic transformation then they are wildly mistaken. Given the economic carnage that is occurring in New Zealand and around the world the next Labour Government is almost certainly going to impose something beginning with the letter 'A'. Austerity.  

That's the thing - there will be a high price to pay for peddling illusions about the Labour Party and it will be the most vulnerable among us who will be expected to pay it.