Eleven weeks till the election, and we're now seeing daily stories about the complete collapse of the health system. Decades of austerity and underfunding and a Ministerial hiring freeze aimed at making short-term "savings" have left our hospitals unable to cope, and the usual winter flu season (something normally manageable with vaccination and a public health campaign) has pushed it over the edge. In Palmerston North, multiple key departments have simply collapsed due to lack of staff, while the emergency department - focus of all National's metrics - has wait times of up to 27 hours. In North Shore, patients are left to lie in their own piss and treated in corridors because there is no-one to care for them and no space anyway.
This is what government looks like under National: nothing works, because they simply refuse to pay for it. Why have a health system or emergency accommodation, when the Luxons can have an eighth house and another holiday in Hawaii?
Meanwhile, today Labour unveiled their election slogan: "Better Starts Now", an implicit message of hope. So obviously they'll be fixing all this, right?
Well, no. Because they've also doubled down on their commitment to austerity, promising to keep National's fiscal straitjacket which means government can't do anything, and ruling out their potential coalition partners' alternative policies. Because Hipkins and Edmonds apparently also think that the Luxons getting that eighth house and another holiday in Hawaii is more important than the rest of us having a functional health system and social safety net. The Labour Party which once promised cradle to grave protection is now politically indistinguishable from the party which destroyed that system and which wants to abandon us to the market.
And then they wonder why they're bumping around 30%. Here's a hint: because they don't offer anything. Here's another: because they lie about that. Sure, National will fuck up our lives and wreck the country even more. And with its commitment to austerity, Labour has effectively promised to do exactly the same - except they're going to tell us all that its "better" and we should all be grateful to them or else we'd be having our lives fucked up by National. And then they wonder why people spit at them and vote for parties which actually offer some real change.
Labour doesn't offer hope. They just offer more of the same, with a different bunch of managers collecting the big salaries. They're so unimaginatively status quo their leader even has the same name as the incumbent. But swapping one Chris for another isn't enough for me. I want change. And fortunately the Green Party is offering exactly that.
