Smiles all very well but we need a bold vision
Let’s ask the big political question of 2021. Has Jacinda Ardern’s Government got the will to be bold, to take risks even at the expense of some of its popularity, to tackle and resolve the biggest issues facing our country?
Or will it continue to be directionless, timid, and afraid to court criticism and risk its poll ratings, and thereby let the disease of poverty and despair go unaddressed?
Covid-19 aside, by biggest issues I mean the housing crisis, child poverty and climate change. Others would add mental health and economic recovery to that list.
For me, this chain of thought started when a leftleaning mate stopped me on the Terrace in Wellington one morning in December and unloaded his anxieties.
Why doesn’t Ardern use some of her immense political capital to do something worthwhile, he asked. Like what, I replied.
Stare down farmers over clean dairying and greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions have been going up, not down, in each of the last three years.
Introduce a capital gains tax if she really thinks that will lead to more fairness and more revenue. Debatable, but even without such a tax there’s no agenda of structural reform in taxation or elsewhere in the economy.
Commandeer the resources to build social houses for the poorest and most desperate, those living in mouldy, damp, and rundown houses, families living in cars and motels. State house waiting lists are going up, not down.
House the rough sleepers, the homeless, and exprisoners, alcoholics and drug users, mental health patients. Stop trying to provide ‘‘affordable’’ housing for middle-income newcomers.
Help Kiwis who are struggling to provide any kind of roof for themselves and their children before subsidising young couples’ property ambitions.
Try taking real action on child poverty. Based on the Government’s own reports, more children now live in poverty than when National was in power, and that was a disgraceful figure then.
Bold and effective reforms based on compassion are clearly needed but the Government is not delivering.
I used to think the PM so loved her position and the cheers of the adoring crowd that she would not do anything that risked losing or lessening her position at the pinnacle of admiration.
I have now moved away from that to the much less charitable view that she doesn’t know what to do. She has no real vision of what she wants New Zealand to be like, beyond the usual cliches.
Real leaders have visions and aspirations. Michael Joseph Savage did, and so did Norman Kirk. Likewise, Donald Trump. Even John Key was ‘‘ambitious for New Zealand’’. All of them had goals, priorities and policies to advance their respective visions.
When have we ever heard Jacinda Ardern articulate a serious vision of what New Zealand can aspire to and how we might get there? Never! Why? Because she doesn’t have a clue.
Others in Labour might have views on such matters but we don’t hear them.
She is the Eva Peron of New Zealand politics: warm, compassionate, caring, kind, smiling, seemingly ever good-humoured, but her Government is piecemeal, fragmented, without an overall direction and seemingly without coherent analysis of issues and a strong strategy.
Make America Great Again was at least an ambition from which policies could be derived. As a slogan it was simple, repeatable, and memorable. Being kind is a great value but it is not a strategy. On non-Covid matters the Government is directionless. There is no grand plan, no bold strategy, no sense of priorities, urgency, or action.
Her path of ‘‘smile, be kind and be empathic’’ works only so long as people like and trust her. Fail to deliver in key areas, and smiling is just weakness. ‘‘Be kind’’ becomes a soft excuse for inaction, and being empathic doesn’t reduce state housing waiting lists, feed or clothe a hungry child, or find a job for a released prisoner.
That’s what makes a compassionate society. That’s what Labour has loved to proclaim that it had over the ‘‘cold, heartless’’ National Party.
Yes, she will lose friends and voters along the way, but she will lose just as many by doing little or nothing. Her champions in the media, and there are many of them, are sycophants, excuse makers, processors of handouts evidencing uncritical laziness – and that’s without going into those who are openly biased in the left’s favour.
Without action on issues dear to the party, Labour’s ground troops, so effective in the last election, will drop off, fade away and find excuses not to help. For their own political future, the Government with the biggest mandate, ruling a country with substantial needs and facing the weakest Opposition in recent history needs to act for New Zealand. So why doesn’t it?
Being kind is a great value but it is not a strategy.