Reason 1: Prime Minister Ardern
Jacinda Ardern. We have the best crisis manager in the world, and pretty much the entire country agrees Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has done and will continue to do an astounding job. No one else comes close. We need a strong and good leader, and Labour has the best.
Reason 2: Minister of Finance Grant Robertson
Most of us still have a job because of his policy interventions. Food on the table. Shoes for the kids. That’s meant $30 billion of support and programmes that will continue to roll out for years. He’s made the scale of intervention that only Labour are practised at delivering and he’s good at it. Check the results:
NZ Weekly electronic card spending for the last 2020 Quarter.
Unemployment is actually holding ok. Every single roading and construction contractor I can see across our horizon is bursting at the seams and will re-train.
As we did in the 1930s, we are going to literally re-build this country out of recession.
Ardern and Robertson are two good reasons all by themselves to vote Labour.
Reason 3: We Feel Safe
We feel safe on average because our houses feel safe. Mortgagee sales are not rising. Renters are now better protected following the recently-passed legislation. New home consents are up with a record number of consents for townhouses, flats, and units. House prices are holding up – meaning most of New Zealand’s wealth is holding up (although there’s some signs of a levelling off in sales).
Mortgage deferral requests peaked in April. Missed payments on consumer loans are actually just fine. So no, there is no September negative tsunami – though businesses are hurting.
Figure 4: Total loan exposure
Source: RBNZ
Reason 4: We Feel Gratitude and Hope
Most of us know people in Australia, and they are now a damaged and divided country. We don’t have that. We don’t have community transmission of Covid-19. Haven’t had for 100 days. Which is like being grateful for World War Z not breaking out – our new global reality.
For the first time in decades our people are begging to come home: we are going to end up from Covid-19 with fewer cheap-labour foreigners and more New Zealand citizens than we’ve ever had. Our children and grandchildren want to be here with us. Gratitude from all those returning or intending to, combined with safety, is an excellent reason to return a government.
Countries across the Pacific are begging us to reconnect. Not too many others can say that.
On top of that, there’s a real economic future too. Exports are up for the year and imports are down.
For the June 2020 year, goods exports rose 1.4%, while imports fell 4.6%, resulting in a deficit for the year ending June of $1.2 billion (Figure 3). This deficit would have been even smaller (around $800 million) were it not for the arrival of HMNZS Aotearoa. Now sure, it won’t last like this – but it’s a better place in which to face a global recession.
The world is so damaged that a future here looks believable, and necessary.
Even that maxim from Prime Minister Norman Kirk needs changing:
Basically there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for.”
In this new world-altering crisis, Labour has responded with a less individualistic and more collective approach for the times:
Someone to lead us, someone to feed us, somewhere to be safe, and gratitude in our common future.”
Ardern + Robertson + Safety + Gratitude + Hope
Labour – and it’s 90% Labour frankly over the last 3 years – have delivered like the Whittaker’s ad, “good, honest government”. It tastes good, is well packaged, is home grown, has a great range of flavours, is increasingly popular, gives its profits back locally, and only costs fractionally more than the bland alternative. That’s a strong brand.
So when you rock up to the polling booth in a few weeks, forget the sympathy votes for the coulda’s and the shoulda’s, set aside the sighing about the transformational this and the whataboutthat’s.
This is where we are, and it’s one of the very best places on earth to be.
To not put too fine a point on it, Labour stopped us from stumbling and pulls us upright and impels us: “Let’s keep moving.”
Return Labour to leadership by voting two ticks for the Labour Party.
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