Blaming anyone but themselves

Labour is increasingly under pressure over its refusal to implement a wealth tax or similar solution to end house hoarding. Their answer? Blame the public:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is putting some onus on the public for the housing crisis, saying the Government had tried taxation to ease the soaring market three times without public support.

[...]

However, Ardern this morning told TVNZ1's Breakfast that "the appetite for some of these policies also needs to come from the public".

"We've tried three times now to do things that specifically sit in that taxation category and there hasn't been wide support for that," she said.

Oh really? In 2019, the public supported a capital gains tax by 44 to 35 percent. And just before the election, 48.7 percent of kiwis thought Labour should be taxing the wealthy more versus 43 percent who disagreed. While neither of these is majority support, its the majority of those who care enough to have an opinion, which is as good as you get. And they're both numbers the government could easily have worked with. Instead, they chose not to, out of chickenshittedness and a desire to grovel to the rich. And rather than own that decision, they're now seeking to blame anyone but themselves. And isn't that so very, very Labour?

But snark about Labour cowardice aside, the other way of looking at this is that Ardern is telling the public "make me". And so we should. The question is how many Labour MPs we have to threaten to turn into democratic roadkill along the way.