LABOUR DRIFTING FURTHER RIGHT UNDER CHRIS HIPKINS

This week, Labour leader Chris Hipkins has suggested that a future Labour Government would not necessarily restore the climate change policies that the present coalition government is busy overturning.

GIVEN THE widespread concern there is about climate change and the reality that it has begun to directly impact on the lives of New Zealanders, it is extraordinary that Labour leader Chris Hipkins should downplay the importance of the fight against it. His comment this week that Labour would not necessarily  commit to restoring the climate change policies the National-led coalition government is busy overturning, suggests that this is a Labour leader more out of touch with community concerns than even his predecessor.

It can be argued that these are the unsurprising remarks of a timidly centrist politician who is not prepared to rock the boat. But it seems the only lesson that Hipkins has taken from Labour's election defeat is that the party wasn't conservative enough. Hipkins, if allowed, is well capable of dragging Labour further to the right of the centrist politics of Jacinda Ardern. This can only be a strategy of diminishing returns for Labour and guarantee it will lose the next election.

Chris Hipkins can get away with this nonsense because he faces next to no opposition from within Labour itself. While more than one Labour MP have declared themselves to be socialists (come on down Kieran McAnulty and Duncan Webb) their 'socialist' politics hasn't motivated them to oppose Labour's continued rightward drift under Hipkins. Similarly, the man championed by some as Labour's next leader has also remained silent. Willie Jackson might not be a paid-up member of the professional managerial class, but his loyalties certainly don't lie with the left. He would be no improvement on Hipkins.

This coalition government is not popular but, equally, neither is Labour. Both parties are each struggling to hold on to the support of a third of the electorate that still bothers to vote.  Our representative democracy is neither representative or democratic and a lot of people have simply given up on it. It continues to deny the electorate an alternative to the neoliberalism that has prevailed for the past four decades. Even on as issue as crucial as climate change, both National and Labour continue to put the interests of capital ahead of the environment. Unfortunately, we continue to be locked into a decades old economic and ideological framework that doesn't work for most people and most people no longer want.