THE 'NEW NORMAL' IS LOOKING LIKE THE OLD NORMAL, BUT WORSE

What Jacinda Ardern has described as 'the new normal' is little more than old pre-covid normal, but worse. 

AS THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT begins to loosen and lift the coronavirus restrictions and Prime MinIster Jacinda Ardern talks airily of a 'new normalcy', its difficult not to conclude that the new normalcy is looking pretty much like the old normalcy, but worse. 

Somewhere back in the mist of time, the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson threatened to do something innovative and talked of 'building back better'. But the Labour Government has behaved as it has always does and defended the interests of the status quo.  

Indeed the Labour Government modus operandi has only aggravated and deepened existing economic and social inequalities. Commentator Bernard Hickey, not one of the Government's favourite journalists, has estimated cash payments for businesses struggling through the pandemic, wage subsidies that saved business owners money, rising property and asset prices, and money printing have made the wealthy nearly $1 trillion richer.

The wealthy have benefited substantially from the pandemic economy. The kind of inflation the political establishment don’t normally like to talk about – asset price inflation – has helped to make the wealthy wealthier.

All the while the Government has offered little in the way of economic support for the rest of us, resulting in ever lengthening queues at the food banks.

And the Labour Government has always known what a devastating impact its economic policies would have. In August 2020 a leaked cabinet document revealed that the Government had been told that some half a million New Zealanders could struggle to put food on the table each day as the economic impact of the virus began to grip. By the end of 2020 Work and Income were issuing 4000 food grants a week.

As  Action Against  Poverty's coordinator Brooke Stanley Pao said in December 2020, the Government had chosen 'to keep people and families in poverty'.

Also in 2020 writer and activist Naomi Klein warned that the coronavirus could see us being 'catapulted backwards to a more brutal winner takes all system'. 

In New Zealand we are starkly confronted with that very threat. Inflation is now back with a bang, and it’s pushing many more people into poverty. This week the ASB Bank has estimated that higher inflation and rising interest rates will cost households an average of $150 a week. Where is that extra money supposed to come from?

There are now over 10,000 people living in emergency housing; motels, boarding houses and campgrounds.

While we saw signs of resistance from the recent Wellington occupation and which the political establishment and its cheerleaders desperately tried to frame as the work of 'the far right', we continue to be hamstrung by a docile Labour - aligned left that continues to behave as if it has the interests of the working class at heart, when its principal role is to protect the electoral interests of Labour.

As always though, it will be the working class who will be expected to make the economic sacrifices while the wealthy continue to prosper under what Jacinda Ardern might like to describe as 'the new normalcy' but is little more than the pre-covid normal, but worse.