2023 NZ Election: Also Shit But Few Care

[fragment]

Voted yesterday. Polls close in 10 minutes. Should start getting results in under half an hour. Started drinking, looks likely to be a rightward lurch.

[fragment]

Somehow was one of the more boring election campaigns of recent years. There's a conspiracy/anti-vax/racist contingent running but hardly anyone wants to hear from them, they won't get any reps, and are fighting among themselves. The most successful people in that crowd are in it for views and tithes anyway, rather than any actual parliamentary work. There's a couple of candidates from major parties who have said some nutty things, like the anti-fluoride guy, but those views won't really shape anything much.

Most notable feature is the fifth or sixth return from the political grave of the "populist" (stupid term) conservative guy. Also a pretty big push from the right rhetorically opposing the recent political consensus that Māori both received a raw deal from colonisation and have a bunch of constitutionally guaranteed rights that have never been properly implemented, and that we should do something about that. How that translates into actual policy remains to be seen. There will be pushback if they try.

A slim chance that the UBI-supporting technocratic we-can-improve-capitalism party will make it in to Parliament, due to the idiosyncracies of our electoral system this depends on the outcome of the vote in a single electorate, despite polling around 2%.

[fragment]

Ugh. Looking more rightward than the opinion polls so far.

[viscousmemories]

Jacinda Ardern was something of a celebrity in the US left media in 2020/2021, but sorry to say I haven't heard much (if anything) about NZ politics since then. Sorry to hear things are going the way they are.

[fragment]

She resigned in January, and fair enough too. Overseeing covid response must have been exhausting, even without assorted other crises.

This was always going to be a tough election given e.g. inflation, but Ardern's successor jettisoned a whole bunch of policy in the attempt to placate "the middle", leaving the Labour Party with little apparent vision to stand on. Then the didn't campaign hard for the couple of notable policies they did keep, so now we get to say goodbye to the fairer employment bargaining that needed a couple of years to bed in before people started seeing the benefits.

Lessons for liberal/centre-left parties in government: stand up hard for something, don't let the right define the agenda, make sure you deliver something that materially changes peoples' lives for the better early in your term and dare the right to oppose it.

[JoeP]

The more rightward lurches due to the economic impact of covid restrictions I see in elections, the more I suspect that covid was engineered by the right. (The energy cost crisis resulting from the Russian invasion is the other big economic factor, and that was obviously engineered by the right.)

Eta: on a longer timescale, the climate crisis is obviously being engineered by the right and their megarich puppet masters, to destabilise democracy and hurt poor people. And on a shorter timescale, I strongly suspect the Hamas attack on Israel was engineered at least in part by the right and their power-obsessed Russian puppet masters to draw attention away from Ukraine.

Basically everything I don't like is the active responsibility of the right.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by JoeP

The more rightward lurches due to the economic impact of covid restrictions I see in elections, the more I suspect that covid was engineered by the right. (The energy cost crisis resulting from the Russian invasion is the other big economic factor, and that was obviously engineered by the right.)

Eta: on a longer timescale, the climate crisis is obviously being engineered by the right and their megarich puppet masters, to destabilise democracy and hurt poor people. And on a shorter timescale, I strongly suspect the Hamas attack on Israel was engineered at least in part by the right and their power-obsessed Russian puppet masters to draw attention away from Ukraine.

Basically everything I don't like is the active responsibility of the right.

Hmm, You may be on to something, there.

[fragment]

Final results due to be released in an hour. This includes overseas voters and special votes - people who registered late, voted outside their electorate, etc. Supposedly about 20% of the total vote. Historically this changed things by a seat or two.

[fragment]

Results out, and confirmed there will have to be an uncomfortable three party agreement led by the centre-right party with support from the neoliberal party and the social conservative party. How that shapes up we'll have to see, the major area they agree on is "tough on crime". There's also fair agreement on "no special recognition of Māori" and "let polluters pollute". Likely to see running down of public services, welfare provision and workers' rights.

Upcoming issues include resource, land use and water reforms. The right parties campaigned pretty hard to repeal the last govt's initiatives but there's no practical going back either and they haven't proposed meaningful alternatives.

[fragment]

Also, there's some close electorate races which will see recounts. Due to mixed proportional system this will not change party make-up in Parliament by much.

[viscousmemories]

Serious question: Is the neoliberal party considered left or right of the centre-right party?

[fragment]

Right. They're very well funded by rich people who want to undo much of the state, and are inclined to whip up our version of specious culture war panics. The centre right party has some similar tendencies but is a bit more pragmatic and arguably has a faction that could pass for mainstream Democrats in the US.

[fragment]

One thing that may confuse Americans is that religion barely gets a look in to our politics. Being too overtly religious tends to receive suspicion and mockery. Our new PM downplays that he attends an evangelical church and had to explicitly reject the idea he would seek to change the legality of abortion.

[Ensign Steve]

Must be nice.

(we actually have that at the local level, and yeah it is nice.)

[viscousmemories]

Meanwhile we have a House Speaker who claimed to be ordained by God in his acceptance speech.

[fragment]

Three party coalition agreed. Skimming the main points in the agreed agenda, a bunch of things do not look good. About what I was expecting. A bunch of devils to come in the details as they begin to govern.