The only thing we can do about awful people is not to become one of them
Election night 2023 was a good night for the landlords, foreign speculators, and the very wealthy.
For tenants and people who mahi hard to keep afloat, not so much.
For those of us whose values include looking after our most vulnerable citizens we wake up knowing that we have a much harder job defending our people from every attack that the elite and wealthy will direct at our whanau.
We know it was a dirty election, we know National and ACT have the media on side, we saw the race baiting. We’ve spent the last 6 years in defense mode, defending a party who were trying to win ‘the middle’. That’s something we need to really reflect on over time. But for now, we need to keep fighting for the things we believed in yesterday.
There is a chance to go on the attack now and make some real progress.
When Labour won in 2020, the political operatives on the right mobilized like we’ve never seen before. Every day a new ‘movement’ popped up be it farmers and their crosses, road safety campaigners, Groundswell, Convoys, Freedom Camps, theological campaigners’ taxpayers unions and their many offshoots…. the list goes on and on. The point is the right mobilized and kept its foot on the government’s neck. The government was forced into a position of defending everything, real and imagined. And we were forced into defending that.
We’ve been liberated from that now.
We can be encouraged that we have now elected a government that has set the highest of standards for ministers and public servants and we have seen over the last 3 years that Aotearoa has a much higher regard for the freedom of people who disagree with a government’s direction to be able to protest and actively agitate for the values and freedoms they wish to see upheld.
We can take inspiration from this new tolerance because to make sure our values and principles are upheld; we are going to be having to fight every inch of the way.
It’s been a tough 6 years for us, the people. We spent the first 3 years wrestling with Winston First, and lost, mostly. The last 3 years we had challenges that were global, and we did our best, and some acknowledged that, some didn’t.
But for people whose values don’t include looking after only the very wealthy, the fightback starts today.
This new government is very fragile.
We’re not.
Lick your wounds, heal your pain, and recharge your batteries. We’ve got a job ahead of us.
Nothing worthwhile is easy.
Kia Kaha Aotearoa
