The last day

Its the end of the election campaign. The last poll is out, showing the same knife-edge we've had all election. 1.67 million of us have already voted, and it'll be close to 2 million by the end of the day. And tomorrow, the rest of us - including me - will go off to vote.

As for which way: this government is the worst in living memory. It has undermined te Tiriti and the rest of our constitution, spat on democracy, wiped its arse with the BORA, and introduced attitudes of casual cruelty and corruption, while presiding over the collapse of essential services. It does not deserve to be re-elected. They've tried to solve that problem with election-rigging, trying to stop people from voting (a campaign which seems to be working for them), in the same way that their Republican friends have in the US. And that alone is why they must absolutely be driven from power.

And that said, Labour absolutely does not deserve to win. They've run a timid, conservative campaign, focused on cuddling up to billionaires, appealing to people who will never vote for them, and ruling out the policies of the parties they will have to work with. Their absolute failure to move the polls when running against a government this awful shows how popular that is. Again: this is the worst government in living memory! The opposition should be wiping the floor with them! But Labour is so useless that they've reduced that to a collective "meh". If the regime retains power, we will absolutely know who is to blame.

So who can you vote for? The answer is simple: if you want change, vote Green or Te Pāti Māori. If you can't stomach either of those, and like gambling, vote Opportunity - because their getting over the threshold is vital if we want regime-change, and while I do not trust them, you can make your own decisions on that. If you hate either option, you can hold your nose and vote Labour, but I'm not going to. Fuck Purple Chris, I want real change!

("Vote" here means "party vote". Electorate vote shouldn't matter, and normally I'd say "give it to the person who you'd like to be your local representative", but there's actual overhang campaigns this time, so I'd suggest voting Green or Te Pāti Māori in seats where they are running strong campaigns, Labour in seats National took off them last time and which might be part of a National overhang, and whoever you like for the rest. If you live in Wellington Bays, you've got a special dilemma over Craig Renney, but you can work that one out for yourself.)

This week, Americans showed us that election rigging can be overcome if enough people vote. Don't let them show us up. Find a polling place, and kick out the government.

Read the fucking room, Chris! II

Chris Hipkins wants a four year term. Look who else supports it:

Harry Mowbray has been behind an advertising drive to persuade conservative voters to split their party and electorate votes to engineer an overhang for the centre-right parties.

[...]

But to him, this week is only a step towards a bigger goal. He expects the election night party at Coatesville will mark a pivot from election campaign to electoral reform campaign.

Mowbray plans to explain the "next stage" to his guests. That will entail pushing for changes to New Zealand's 30-year-old MMP electoral system, and extending Parliamentary terms to four years.

And the reason for both is to have less democracy and less accountability. So politicians will work for billionaires like Mowbray, and not for us.

This is who Hipkins has effectively allied himself with: billionaires who want to overthrow our democracy. And we can all see it. Time to repudiate this position, Chris, unless you want people to make the connection with opposing wealth taxes and start drawing unpleasant conclusions...

America defends its democracy

Americans went to the polls yesterday in midterm elections, and delivered an electoral bloodbath for Republicans. The Democrats regained control of the House and Senate by huge margins, as well as capturing a swathe of state governors and legislatures. Texas is now a blue state. Texas!

Its a stunning rejection of the Trump regime. And, if the results are allowed to stand, it will mean Trump's agenda is fucked for the rest of his term. Congress won't pass his laws, fund his programs, or appoint his stooges. And it will investigate his cronies, and hopefully impeach him and his criminal cabinet. On the state level, the shift will mean undoing Republican gerrymandering, ending cooperation with ICE, and hopefully activating the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, effectively ending the anti-democratic electoral college.

The Democratic leadership is trying to downplay all of this, showing how unsuited they are to the moment, but hopefully they'll be rolled and replaced by people who recognise the task ahead of them: not raising money for Democrat political consultants, but defending and enhancing America's democracy and delivering for its people. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani showed the way, and hopefully the rest of the party will follow.

But while its good to see this, and great to see Americans marching to the polls to defend their democracy - Americans who think this signifies a return to normality with the rest of the world are mistaken. That ship has sailed. Electing Trump once could be taken as an aberration; re-electing him shows a systematic weakness in American politics - that they can just go fascist, tear up all their agreements, and start bombing people for shits and giggles like a mad emperor. America has shown that it fundamentally cannot be trusted anymore, and that the rest of the world will have to work around it if we want stability and normality. And we will. The upshot is that the American empire, which depended fundamentally on soft power and cooperation rather than coercion, is over. And Americans better start getting used to the idea.

52,000 unemployed under National

The September labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.7%. There are now 174,000 unemployed, 52,000 more than when National took office.

This, I guess, is the "plan" National wants us to stick to. The sheep they don't want us to leave half-shagged. A plan which sees tens of thousands of people thrown on the scrapheap to Keep Wages Low and maintain the wealth of the rich. If you think that this "plan" is madness, then you know what to do: find a polling place, and vote them out.

Read the fucking room, Chris!

Four days until the election, and with overhangs a hot topic, The Post asked parties how they would fix them. Labour's solution? Do nothing - but introduce a four-year term!

But a spokesperson for the party said it was not proposing any changes to the overhang or to the 5% threshold.

On four-year terms, the party was more open to a change.

“A four-year term would let governments slow down and get things right rather than rushing to have something to show at the next election. A change this significant would need to be decided by New Zealanders in a referendum.”

For fuck's sake Chris, learn to read the fucking room! We've just had the worst government in living memory, a regime which has attacked te Tiriti, shat on the BORA, undermined democracy, abused the parliamentary process, taken bribes, and even tried to rig an election - and Chris's answer is to say we should hand such regimes more power and make them even less accountable to the public.

This is why we hate you, Chris. Because faced with... this... his most pressing concern is to pad his own arse, secure his own fat salary for 25% more time, and he can't recognise how hideously unpopular it is.

If this regime is anything, it is an argument for a shorter term, not a longer one. Our problem has never (except in the mind of Chris) been "good governments not getting enough time". Governments in Aotearoa get exactly as much time as they can convince us to give them. Instead, our problem is that we can't throw out a bad government when we need to! imagine how much less harm this regime could have done if they had faced an election last November, rather than now. Imagine how it would have modified their behaviour! Imagine how we could have nobbled them and taken the edge off their excesses - or thrown them out completely. That's what we need to do. We need to cut the parliamentary term from three years to two. And if the politicians don't like it, well, fuck them. If they want to live in a dictatorship, they can move to America.