ALTERNATIVE AOTEAROA : MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Alternative Aotearoa recognised that 'business as usual has failed most of us' but, unfortunately, its definition of 'business as usual' didn't include supporting the Labour Party.

SHORTLY BEFORE the 2020 election some two hundred activists attended the Alternative Aotearoa hui in Wellington. They came together to formulate what amounted to an alternative economic agenda for New Zealand. A final report was issued in August.

The report says, somewhat mischievously, that 'We seek an Aotearoa where everyone can flourish. Surely no political party can reject that vision?' But this manifesto, shaped essentially around an agenda for a 'kinder and gentler' capitalism, was undoubtedly pitched at a likely second term Labour or Labour-led government. It could not of been any other way because many of the organisations that were represented at the hui were either directly affiliated to the Labour Party or supportive of it. These included the Council of Trade Unions, the Unite Union and Greenpeace.

From a socialist perspective, the final document is underwhelming in its pitch for a more benign capitalism - its essentially keynesianism on steroids. But its underlying assumption that Labour can still, even now, be turned from its neoliberal ways renders it politically impotent. Some eight months after it was released, it has had exactly zero impact.

The report states:

'Almost forty years after the neoliberal coup, the government must address the causes of systemic and related market failures and reform public policy to prioritise the wellbeing of people, not capital. That requires fundamental redesign of laws on public finance and market-driven regulation and state owned infrastructure and services.'

And what political vehicle will be used to bring about such changes? The report never directly answers this question but its obviously a Labour Government. That's the same Labour Government that is presently busy defending and maintaining the economic status quo. The authors of this report reveal a failure to grasp the reality that the two major parliamentary parties ,Labour and National, have converged in their defence of the market economy and the political and economic elite who prosper from it. Instead they cling to the illusion that the present Labour Party remains a political aberration - the victim of a 'neoliberal coup' forty years ago - and can still be retaken. All this 'strategy' has led to is voting Labour at every election and expecting things to be different.

The election arena remains too important to abandon to gutless liberals and the right, united in their defence of corporate interests. We need a new political party concerned with advancing the interests of the working class -  who make up most of the over half a million of people who no longer vote because they have worked out that the present  system doesn't work for them. But we're not going to get there if we continue to sow illusions about the political character of the Labour Party. We're never going to get there if well-meaning events like Alternative Aotearoa put a message in a bottle - a plea for help - and hope that someone from the Labour Party will find that bottle and maybe even read the message inside and take action.