Our PM Jacinda Ardern (and the government)

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#2890013 22-Mar-2022 12:51

Technofreak:

Yes policy platforms are aspirational to some degree but they also have to be taken with some seriousness otherwise why announce them to start with? When those policies are enacted, as in Kiwi Build, there is a realistic expectation there will be a successful outcome. True it may not be as grand as the original plan but there is still and expectation of a worthwhile outcome. Instead we got a major fail.

Compare the outcome of the likes of Kiwi Build with the Think Big Projects. Chalk and cheese, one got done (which included several major projects) and one didn't'. This government has had far too many failures like this.

Absolutely 100%. There's 'aspirational' and then there's bait and switch. The problem is that Labour were repeatedly challenged on just how plausible these policies were. There were no couched weasel-words around being merely aspirational, they swore they were and that they would do them. In fact, they used them as a platform to attack National for not doing enough in comparison.

Were it not for Covid, the 2020 Election would have been National vs. a government who had managed to achieve almost nothing at all.

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#2890014 22-Mar-2022 12:54

GV27:

Were it not for Covid, the 2020 Election would have been National vs. a government who had managed to achieve almost nothing at all.

Not to mention almost a scandal a week for 12 months :)

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#2890036 22-Mar-2022 13:32

elpenguino:

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+progressive&rlz=1C1GIVA_enNZ910NZ910&oq=define+progressive

Definition of progressive met.

People may not like what the Labour government is trying to change, after all, that is the definition of conservative https://www.google.com/search?q=define+conservative

but because this country is not perfect, they are trying to change things.

I wasn't asking you what you meant by 'progressive' I was asking Rikkitic.

Since you jumped in to help, what has this government been trying to change that makes them progressive?

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#2890051 22-Mar-2022 14:04

I'm sure Rikkitic can stand up for herself so I'm not attempting to 'help'.

I posted that out of annoyance at the level of discourse and what looked like pejorative use of a neutral term.

In light of that definition I posted then you will see your last question doesn't actually require an answer i.e. the fact that the Labour government is making changes meets the definition of progressive.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

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#2890057 22-Mar-2022 14:10

elpenguino:

i.e. the fact that the Labour government is making changes meets the definition of progressive.

It meets the dictionary version of the word, but I don't think it would meet the typical political definition by any stretch, especially when JA stood up and said Labour would be a transformational Government.

Any more than their promise to be open and transparent either.

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#2890118 22-Mar-2022 14:33

It's helpful to speak the same language as others though isn't it. So, to facilitate that, I use the mainstream definitions as agreed by experts. If y'all want to make things up as you go along, go right ahead.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

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#2890119 22-Mar-2022 14:35

elpenguino:

I'm sure Rikkitic can stand up for herself so I'm not attempting to 'help'.

I posted that out of annoyance at the level of discourse and what looked like pejorative use of a neutral term.

In light of that definition I posted then you will see your last question doesn't actually require an answer i.e. the fact that the Labour government is making changes meets the definition of progressive.

On that basis every government must be progressive, so why the need to use the term progressive to describe a government?

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#2890122 22-Mar-2022 14:42

elpenguino:

It's helpful to speak the same language as others though isn't it. So, to facilitate that, I use the mainstream definitions as agreed by experts. If y'all want to make things up as you go along, go right ahead.

You might want to talk to Labour about that then, since they don't seem to understand what the mainstream definition of 100,000 is, nor a billion (trees in case you are wondering), nor what open and transparent are.

No-one else seems to be struggling to understand what was meant when JA stood up and said they would be transformational and in the context of that, what progressive should mean.

People use phrases and definitions adjusted for context all the time and it's perfectly legitimate.

Perhaps save your energy being snippy and sarcastic, and use it to post which policies the Labour Government has delivered on which would meet the contextual definition of progressive or transformational?

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#2890129 22-Mar-2022 15:06

Interesting discussion here. I decided to bow out because I realised I just don't have the energy or motivation to pursue a serious debate on these issues. Most of the people here attacking the government clearly have right-wing sympathies anyway, and would look for hammers to use against it regardless of what it did. Fair enough. I feel the same way about any conceivable National government. But I'm not interested in debating the perceived failures. I'm just tired of the whole thing.

To answer the question, which has already been answered here very well, terms like 'progressive' and 'conservative' are just a form of verbal shorthand. They convey concepts that most people broadly agree on, even if some details differ. I particularly dislike labels like 'left wing' and 'right wing', which sound more like the contents of a KFC bucket than anything worthy of discussion. I'm not that keen on 'progressive' either, which is just another label, but it serves to distinguish from conservative so I don't have to include a page-long description of what I'm trying to say every time I use the term.

Sure, conservative politics can also contain 'progressive' ideas, but as as also been pointed out here, conservative by definition means being opposed to change, and that fits the right better than the left, regardless of actual policy positions. I happen to like Jacinda Ardern because I think she's a cool leader, not because I think she gets everything right. I think Christopher Luxon also would not get everything right, but he is not a cool leader, so I prefer Jacinda Ardern.

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#2890310 22-Mar-2022 19:57

GV27: but the sheer brazenness of promising almost everything under the sun that you had zero capability or intent to deliver for me is the real scandal in the 2017 election, arguably far worse than any other previous election scandal to do with spending or donations, simply because it relied on the core weakness of democratic systems of getting people to vote for you and then abandoning the pretext on which you did so.

To give in a non-political context, I'd call it a bait-and-switch.

You guys are off on a tangent here. There is nothing whatsoever to back that up.

It is clearly a failed policy implementation. Labour fully intended to build the number of houses they claimed and it failed to do so. The core thing they intended to use for that purpose was not suited to the task and they stayed with it hoping it would start working. In some ways the mechanism is probably not too bad. I have not looked at the details. My impression is the minister was somewhat inflexible about making adjustments on the ground.

When it became clear that was not working at least Labour did introduce a few other things that helped and will help including the RMA zoning thing. Imo that will start to cure the issue of poor quality residential apartments going up on main drags and semi-industrial areas which are not attractive at all for many people and are unlikely to provide sustainable housing.

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#2890493 23-Mar-2022 09:35

gzt:
GV27: but the sheer brazenness of promising almost everything under the sun that you had zero capability or intent to deliver for me is the real scandal in the 2017 election, arguably far worse than any other previous election scandal to do with spending or donations, simply because it relied on the core weakness of democratic systems of getting people to vote for you and then abandoning the pretext on which you did so.

To give in a non-political context, I'd call it a bait-and-switch.

You guys are off on a tangent here. There is nothing whatsoever to back that up.

It is clearly a failed policy implementation. Labour fully intended to build the number of houses they claimed and it failed to do so. The core thing they intended to use for that purpose was not suited to the task and they stayed with it hoping it would start working. In some ways the mechanism is probably not too bad. I have not looked at the details. My impression is the minister was somewhat inflexible about making adjustments on the ground.

When it became clear that was not working at least Labour did introduce a few other things that helped and will help including the RMA zoning thing. Imo that will start to cure the issue of poor quality residential apartments going up on main drags and semi-industrial areas which are not attractive at all for many people and are unlikely to provide sustainable housing.

100K houses in 10 years is 27 houses a DAY every single day of that time, including xmas and every public holiday. Even Harry Potter isn't that magic.

Claims like this, and a Billion trees, were so delusional in nature, it should really have shown they weren't fit to Govern in the first place.

What's even more alarming is that for 18 months despite making no progress on Kiwibuild, they continued to stand up and state they would still meet those targets. By that point they would need to produce around 32 houses every single day.

That isn't a failure to execute a policy. The issue was in the policy itself. If they had spent some of the nine years they spent whining at National about housing, doing even some basic research and working out what actually would have been required to achieve even half that number and paid attention to the market and actually had a look at the type and design of the houses they said they would build, they could have adjusted the policy to make sense and be achievable.

If a publically listed company made claims akin to those of this Government and used taxpayer money to fund them, and then failed as spectacularly as they did, the CXO suite would be facing charges.

GV27

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#2890497 23-Mar-2022 09:38

gzt:
You guys are off on a tangent here. There is nothing whatsoever to back that up.

It is clearly a failed policy implementation. Labour fully intended to build the number of houses they claimed and it failed to do so. The core thing they intended to use for that purpose was not suited to the task and they stayed with it hoping it would start working. In some ways the mechanism is probably not too bad. I have not looked at the details. My impression is the minister was somewhat inflexible about making adjustments on the ground.

The policy was totally unrealistic, the costings were out of date, they rebuffed any suggestion of it during the campaign and then months after forming a government, updated the target prices for Kiwibuild because it turned out the costings were out of date.

So yea, I feel like 'Bait and Switch' is the appropriate term here. When you campaign on 'transformational' change and deliver muddling nonsense, that's going beyond 'failed policy implementation'. How many 'failed policy implementations' would they have to rack up before you accepted that their 2017 campaign manifesto was perhaps unrealistic?

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#2890530 23-Mar-2022 11:35

Rikkitic:

Interesting discussion here. I decided to bow out because I realised I just don't have the energy or motivation to pursue a serious debate on these issues. Most of the people here attacking the government clearly have right-wing sympathies anyway, and would look for hammers to use against it regardless of what it did. Fair enough. I feel the same way about any conceivable National government. But I'm not interested in debating the perceived failures. I'm just tired of the whole thing.

To answer the question, which has already been answered here very well, terms like 'progressive' and 'conservative' are just a form of verbal shorthand. They convey concepts that most people broadly agree on, even if some details differ. I particularly dislike labels like 'left wing' and 'right wing', which sound more like the contents of a KFC bucket than anything worthy of discussion. I'm not that keen on 'progressive' either, which is just another label, but it serves to distinguish from conservative so I don't have to include a page-long description of what I'm trying to say every time I use the term.

Sure, conservative politics can also contain 'progressive' ideas, but as as also been pointed out here, conservative by definition means being opposed to change, and that fits the right better than the left, regardless of actual policy positions. I happen to like Jacinda Ardern because I think she's a cool leader, not because I think she gets everything right. I think Christopher Luxon also would not get everything right, but he is not a cool leader, so I prefer Jacinda Ardern.

I'm sorry but... I'm speechless. You dislike labels Left and Right then proceed to use them later in the same statement?

So regardless of results and performance your basing your opinion on how "cool" a person is?

I really can't process that this is the New Zealand I live in...

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#2890573 23-Mar-2022 12:16

JPNZ:

Rikkitic:

Interesting discussion here. I decided to bow out because I realised I just don't have the energy or motivation to pursue a serious debate on these issues. Most of the people here attacking the government clearly have right-wing sympathies anyway, and would look for hammers to use against it regardless of what it did. Fair enough. I feel the same way about any conceivable National government. But I'm not interested in debating the perceived failures. I'm just tired of the whole thing.

To answer the question, which has already been answered here very well, terms like 'progressive' and 'conservative' are just a form of verbal shorthand. They convey concepts that most people broadly agree on, even if some details differ. I particularly dislike labels like 'left wing' and 'right wing', which sound more like the contents of a KFC bucket than anything worthy of discussion. I'm not that keen on 'progressive' either, which is just another label, but it serves to distinguish from conservative so I don't have to include a page-long description of what I'm trying to say every time I use the term.

Sure, conservative politics can also contain 'progressive' ideas, but as as also been pointed out here, conservative by definition means being opposed to change, and that fits the right better than the left, regardless of actual policy positions. I happen to like Jacinda Ardern because I think she's a cool leader, not because I think she gets everything right. I think Christopher Luxon also would not get everything right, but he is not a cool leader, so I prefer Jacinda Ardern.

I'm sorry but... I'm speechless. You dislike labels Left and Right then proceed to use them later in the same statement?

So regardless of results and performance your basing your opinion on how "cool" a person is?

I really can't process that this is the New Zealand I live in...

I'm sorry for your speech impediment but it is not hard to process that you live in a New Zealand populated by a range of people with a range of ideas and also a sense of humour.

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GV27

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#2890579 23-Mar-2022 12:32

JPNZ:

I really can't process that this is the New Zealand I live in...

Luxon has just given an interview this morning where he says that accomodation costs of 30% to 40% of someone's income is 'ideal'. We're past that point now with low interest rates. It's going to get a lot worse. 50% will be closer to reality for people with large mortgages coming off fixed in the next 12 months.

I have posted my thoughts in the National thread, but I despair how much we have normalised circumstances that we all know just ends up with Kiwis going backwards, and the death of accountability that goes along with it.

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