January 31, 2016
Labour’s State of the Nation reclaims Party’s soul
Labour's State of the Nation reclaims Party's soul
MARTYN BRADBURY
The promise of democracy is that you can look into the face of your child and know that your child will get a better deal of life than you did. Under National that dream has increasingly become a nightmare.
Inequality is soaring, child poverty is an obscenity, housing affordability is a sick joke, the economy is hurting and unemployment climbs. These are all well worn discussions of any Labour Party but Little has managed to do it without the usual doom and gloom that sometimes ends up depressing voters rather than inspire them.
Holding the State of the Nation at the same time as a massive anti-TPPA picnic 10 minutes away was an oversight that reminds Labour why having an Auckland HQ must be the next thing to invest in. That clash saw numbers at a few hundred when it could have been at least a thousand.
Little's recent win by having the Caucus support his call against the TPPA has given him the mana to start promoting policy that is identifiably Labour. Little paid homage to Phil Goff who was there and said Goff would make a great Auckland Mayor, he explained that Labour is a family and sometimes you fight in that family but as a family you always come together in the end. Little then went onto explain his reasoning on why the TPPA was so awful. It was a moment Phil simply had to grin and bare.
This stamp of leadership has given Little the mandate to start pushing bold policy and it doesn't get much bolder than 3 years free tertiary education so that the next generation can gain the training they need for a world increasingly losing jobs to machines.
It is this vision forwards that makes Labour look less grouchy and angry, they have sought real solutions. Reducing the next generations student debt is a solution, allowing more young people to gain an education without cost is a solution and paying for it all out of the money National intend to use for tax cuts does more to rebalance inequality than National have manned to suggest in 8 years of Government.
National's sleepwalk to victory in 2017 just ended.
Martyn Bradbury
Editor – TheDailyBlog.co.nz
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