A COUPLE of days ago, RNZ reported on the increasing financial pressure that Auckland charities were under. One charity's difficult circumstances was typical. Despite losing significant private funding, Nurturing Families was still trying to help 300 Auckland families in need.
Founder Taylah Nasmith told RNZ: 'The need is the highest we've ever seen, so every single month we continue to have record-breaking months. There are so many caseworkers that don't even know where to reach out to, so when they find us, we're often inundated with applications for families.'
Such economic distress has not happened by accident. It is the inevitable result of economic policies that have only served to deepen the country's level of inequality and poverty. It is the result of an austerity agenda that was pursued by the previous Labour Government and that has only been accelerated under the present National-led coalition government.
Despite Prime Minister Christopher Luxon monotonously claiming that his government was all about 'economic growth', next week's budget will announce the further continuance of the austerity agenda. It's that agenda that has led to increasing unemployment, and underemployment, surging homelessness and a record number of people leaving the country. As well, a sledgehammer has been taken to essential public services, leading to some 10,000 public sector workers losing their jobs, including 2,000 workers in the health sector.
Yet the architects of this economic disaster have still rushed to attack the Green Party's alternative budget and probably have done so without having actually read it. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has derided the two Green Party leaders as 'Chloe Marx and Marama Engels'. Back in the day, this would be referred to as 'red baiting', the old standby of political scoundrels everywhere.
Yet it wasn't so long ago that Peter was also the opponent of the neoliberal status quo he now supports. In 2018, he described neoliberalism as 'a debased strain of economic thought which has preoccupied this country’s polity since the General Election of 1984'. According to Peters, neoliberalism needed to be replaced with 'a humanistic strain of capitalism which manages the economy in a way which benefits all New Zealanders.'
Despite the hysterical over-reaction from Winston Peters and Finance Minister Nicola Willis ('a Soviet manifesto') to the Green's alternative economic pathway, the Green budget does not signal that the revolution is here, not just yet anyway. But it's the kind of vitriol that the Green Party can expect more of in the months leading up to next year's general election. The political establishment, the oligarchy, has become inured to getting their own way, by fair means or foul, and any attack on their entrenched privilege is likely to be met with the staunchest possible opposition.
The Green Party's budget reminds us that not only has neoliberalism failed, and failed dismally, but the continuance of an austerity agenda that allows the one percent to prosper at the expense of everyone else, is a political choice. We can choose differently.
Meantime, the Government's cheerleaders in the media have gone into overdrive to denounce the Green Party's budget. Newstalk ZB's Heather du Plessis Allan has described it as 'crazy stuff'. But this is the same woman who recommended to Finance Minister Nicola Willis that she should follow Argentina President Javier Milei's example and impose even more severe cuts. Argentina's rate of poverty has soared under Milei.
Also on Newstalk ZB, overnight host Tim Beveridge said he remained 'terrified' that the Green Party could ever get into government. What he really means is that he and his fellow media cheerleaders for the Government are terrified that neoliberalism will finally be overturned. They are terrified of democracy because they know that democracy and oligarchy do not mix. They really are a bunch of pricks.
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