WHERE IS THE FIGHTBACK?

In the face of the National-led coalition government's austerity agenda, where is the economic alternative, and where is the fightback?


WHILE LABOUR is engaged in hand-to-hand battles with the National-led coalition government over various policies, it continues to provide little evidence that it is has a clear economic and political alternative to offer. Labour could well go into the next election simply promising to be a better manager of the neoliberal economy than National. Again. This will not excite or inspire a cynical and jaded electorate, with over three-quarter of a million potential voters staying away from the voting booths at the 2023 election.

It should not be this way. While Prime Minister Christopher Luxon talks of 'restoring the economy' what he doesn't say is that he wants to do it on the back of those least able to afford it. While he might say it's all about reducing the level of public debt and the country 'living within its means', to quote Finance Minister Nicola Willis, its spending cuts are designed to erode the power of working people.

The New Zealand economy is in bad shape, but the National-led coalition government wants to pile the burden of the economic crisis on those least able to afford it. For instance, beneficiaries are one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. But they have suffered a cut in benefits, in real terms, by the Government switching the calculation of annual changes from the movement of the average wage to the Consumer Price Index. The CPI has traditionally been a lower number.

As Mike Treen of the Unite Union points out, we've been down this road before:

'The austerity unleashed in the 1990s was designed to break union power and lower real wages, to boost the profits of big business. Cutting benefit values and access to benefits, they believe, helps that process. The economic and social results last time were horrendous. But it seems that the bosses and their political representatives are planning on going down the same road again.'

The onus should be on Labour to provide a clear alternative to the austerity agenda, but it's already been found wanting. Given its four decades of unswerving loyalty to neoliberalism, this is hardly surprising. Even now, leader Chris Hopkins seems disinclined to upset the neoliberal applecart. If former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern briefly glimpsed that serious economic transformation was required, Chris Hipkins knows that his job, as captain of capitalism's 'B' team, is to help shore up the status quo. He remains a technocrat and a compromiser.  And there doesn't appear to be anyone from within the Labour Party's parliamentary ranks prepared to challenge him. They really are a subservient and docile lot.

Chris Hipkins might be being told by those closest to him that he's being 'responsible' and acting 'pragmatically'. However, all he's doing is reinforcing the sense held by many voters that all politicians are the same and that nothing is likely to change no matter who they vote for.

Mike Treen writes:

'Last time we couldn’t stop them because the working class movement had been to an extent disarmed by the 1984-90 Labour government initiating the austerity agenda and unemployment had already gone from 4 to 7.5% before National took power. The union leaders told us then that there was no alternative, and we could not fight. Today, we know that there must be an alternative, and we must fight.'

But that alternative is unlikely to come from the Labour Party, and the fightback is unlikely to come from a conservative trade union leadership. At a time when working people are under concerted attack from capital and its political representatives, both the Labour Party and the trade union leadership have never been more unrepresentative of working class interests.