JACINDA ARDERN : ENTRENCHING THE STATUS QUO

Max Rashbrooke :The Ardern-led government has entrenched the status quo.

The unemployment figures are rapidly moving upwards at a time when the rich are getting richer. But, says writer and researcher Max Rashbrooke, Jacinda Ardern's first term government displayed 'little appetite for redistribution' and 'not much change should be expected' if Labour is re-elected in November.

THE FIGURES are bad but we knew they would be. The number of beneficiaries rose by 12 percent in April this year, the highest increase ever in the past 24 years. They were also nearly double the next biggest increase. It looks like we're well on our way of fulfilling Treasury projections of a 16 percent unemployment rate. This will easily surpass the 12.4 unemployment rate that occurred in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.

This comes at a time when new data, taken from the 2017-18 Household Economic Survey, shows that New Zealand's wealthiest individuals have over $140bn locked away in trusts. Overall the country's rich elite have nearly 70 times more assets than the average New Zealander.

Writing in The Guardian Max Rashbrooke observes: 'Overall, the wealthiest 10% have 59% of all the country’s assets, and the middle classes around 39%. That leaves the poorest half of the country with just 2%.'

This was the economic landscape that the Labour-led Government surveyed in 2017 but, since then, they have shown little desire to alter that landscape. Rashbrooke warns that Labour is unlikely to change direction if re-elected in November:

Jacinda Ardern's empty rhetoric of 2017.

'Not much change should be expected, however. On becoming Labour leader in August 2017, Ardern resuscitated the idea of a capital gains tax, 80% of which would have been paid by the wealthiest 20%. But after vociferous opposition from property investors and the National party, she eventually ruled it out under her leadership. She has also been distinctly lukewarm about the Green party proposal for a tax on wealth over $1m.

When it comes to the most unequally distributed forms of wealth, such as trusts, shares, bonds and direct ownership of companies, Ardern’s Labour-led government has shown little appetite for redistribution. In housing, a substantial and accelerating state house-building programme cannot make up for the failures of Kiwibuild and other initiatives.'

If New Zealand had a truly progressive party with an alternative economic agenda, it would be challenging the Labour-led government for failing to tackle the growing levels of poverty and inequality. It would be challenging Labour's attempt to rebuild the status quo on behalf of the vested interests of capital.

But, of course, there is  no such party. Instead folk have effectively been abandoned to the wolves of neoliberalism. Meantime Labour Party supporters prefer talking about what the husband of Judith Collins has been posting to his Facebook page, rather than the grim economic realities that tens of thousands of New Zealanders are now facing.