A clear message

There's an election next year, and we're already seeing the usual posturing about who will work with who. Today it's Labour refusing to work with Te Pāti Māori in the wake of the latter's victory in the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection - a victory which showed that Māori voters don't want to be represented by Labour and don't want their representatives being constantly over-ruled by Pakeha primarily concerned with pandering to other Pakeha. Which probably sounds "tough" to Chris Hipkins and the Pakeha he is trying to pander to. But there's someone Hipkins seems to have forgotten in all his ruling out: the voters. Because on current polling, Te Pāti Māori is vital to forming a Labour-led government. And that looks like it will be the case unless Labour drags its own vote well into the upper part of the 35 - 40% range (and then assuming that it grows it from National, not at the expense of the Greens). Which seems... unlikely when the party is essentially offering voters nothing, other than that Ministers will wear a different coloured tie while delivering the same old austerity.

In fact, Hipkins' refusal sends voters a clear message: if you want real change, you need to vote for it. And that means voting for the Greens or Te Pāti Māori rather than Labour. If you want wealth taxes, better public services, climate action, a Tiriti-centric government, and the repeal of all National's racist legislation, don't vote Labour. Vote for one of the parties who actually advocates for those things instead. Vote for them to hold a democratic gun to Labour's head and force them to implement those policies - or surrender the power and positions and prestige and salaries which they crave so much.

Labour won't like this. But if they want the votes of people who want change and the support of the parties we elect - rather than taking both for granted - they need to earn them. They do this by offering us something, rather than arrogantly insisting on an obligation to support them, as if they were the only alternative to National. They're not, and they never have been - but they especially haven't been since 1996, when we got MMP. Which was almost 30 years ago. You'd think their brains would have caught up by now...

Hipkins can huff and puff and rule parties out all he likes. But at the end of the day he has to play the hand we deal him. That's our weapon. And we should use it.