Hawkes Bay Today
  • Hawke's Bay Today home
  • Latest news
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology

Locations

  • Napier
  • Hastings
  • Havelock North
  • Central Hawke's Bay
  • Tararua

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • Napier
  • Hastings
  • Dannevirke
  • Gisborne

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Election 2023: An open letter to Labour from climate activist Bruce Bisset

By Bruce Bisset
Hawkes Bay Today·
15 Sep, 2023 06:02 PM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save
    Share this article
Bruce Bisset says "Labour no longer has a transformative bone in its collective body".
Bruce Bisset says "Labour no longer has a transformative bone in its collective body".

Bruce Bisset says "Labour no longer has a transformative bone in its collective body".

OPINION

Dear Labour,

You are about to lose an election that should have been locked in, and it’s your own fault.

Despite the fact you handled Covid-19 and its economic impacts better than any comparable nation, no-one is extending you credit for it via a third term.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Why not? Because, that aside, you let us all down.

Oh, I know you’ve worked wonders trying to fix health and education and a myriad of other things broken almost to dysfunction under John Key’s no-care government, and I realise the pandemic and its flow-on effects stopped those things being better than they would otherwise have been by now.

And I do really appreciate your social focus in supporting workers and their families to be as well-paid as they could be against a global cost-of-living crisis that threatened to tip us into depression.

But it hasn’t been enough.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

See, you promised to be transformational, and you failed to even start.

Back in 2017, Jacinda Ardern spoke of climate change as being her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”, and we were uplifted and inspired by what that promised, because climate change is not just New Zealand’s, but the human race’s, most pressing problem.

Placing it front and centre of the political will using the touchstone of our famous anti-nuclear stance that brought an end to atomic bomb testing in the Pacific indicated a willingness to lead the world in addressing this even more dire conundrum.

Then, nothing happened. If it hadn’t been for the Greens prodding along the formation of the Climate Commission we might not have gotten even the soft targets and incremental changes made in this sphere.

The disappointment, among those of us awake enough to recognise the catastrophic consequences of delay, was palpable. It still is, and we are six years closer to extinction.

Instead, you embarked on a laudable but messy attempt at social uplift by focusing on housing, health, and education, with varying and generally (even in context with Covid) below-par results.

You did not, however, attempt to redress the inequality at the base of these problems: the need for a redistribution of wealth. Indeed you categorically ruled out such an attempt when you took any effective capital gains tax off the table.

Hope that this stance might change, and you would recognise the deep-felt hurt and desperation so many of our citizens suffer just to keep a roof over their heads, was dashed when Chris Hipkins became leader and repeated this mistake.

Clearly, Labour no longer has a transformative bone in its collective body. That is a disappointment - indeed, a betrayal - that must make even the most ardent supporter despair.

So, the Right is about to win again and remove any doubt about our ability to withstand the coming double-tsunami of inescapable climate change and disempowering inequality.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

National in coalition with (shudder) Act will destroy our environmental protections and escalate rent and house prices while selling off what little is left of our public property to foreigners, all for the sake of excessive short-term profit.

Which only the already wealthy will benefit from. Those in the “squeezed middle” who fantasise this may help them are seriously disconnected.

But nevertheless, people will vote for this madness simply because they think - wrongly - that a change might improve things overall. As if “trickle down” has ever worked.

All because you, the Labour Government, have failed to live up to your promised mission statement.

Oh, and because the alt-Right-led confuse-and-confront “protest” campaign has sucked in fringe left-wingers and further distanced non-voters, undermining the whole basis of democracy - to the Right’s exclusive benefit.

That’s a sad yet eminently avoidable legacy.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Read More

  • Election 2023: Act’s Simon Court says no climate emergency, ...
  • El Niño incoming: NZ’s climate to take ‘rapid turn’ ...
  • Election 2023: National’s concerning lack of climate ...
  • Election 2023: Green Party lays out key policies in ...
  • Greens, Māori Party call out Labour over climate policy ...
  • Todd Muller bows out with plea for climate action and ...
  • Simon Wilson: National, Labour and their magical thinking ...

Meanwhile, the minor parties who have solid policies to address these most crucial issues - the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, and also TOP - will once more be left out of the mix. They may well be the future, if we have one, but the electorate is not sophisticated or wise enough to recognise that yet.

More’s the pity.

So, back to business as usual, eh? And we end in tears.

Bruce Bisset is a member of Extinction Rebellion NZ and has appeared in Hawke’s Bay Today previously as a columnist on issues from the left wing of politics.


Save
    Share this article

Latest from Hawkes Bay Today

Hawkes Bay Today

'Required to arrest': Inside police's new retail-crime patrols

Premium
Opinion

EIT’s beginnings and debunking a Hawke’s Bay myth: Michael Fowler

Opinion

Daisy Coles: An expat's daydream for a perfect Napier day


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Recommended for you

Fire crews extinguish blaze at smoke-logged Mitre 10 Westgate
New Zealand

Fire crews extinguish blaze at smoke-logged Mitre 10 Westgate

Auckland Lotto player wins $1m, Powerball jackpots to $12m
New Zealand

Auckland Lotto player wins $1m, Powerball jackpots to $12m

Wallabies fight to keep Lions series alive in Melbourne
Rugby

Wallabies fight to keep Lions series alive in Melbourne

Black Caps meet South Africa in Twenty20 Tri-series final
Black Caps

Black Caps meet South Africa in Twenty20 Tri-series final

How a prison guard's phone favour for an inmate led to a brutal attack
Crime

How a prison guard's phone favour for an inmate led to a brutal attack

Warriors dealt shock defeat as Titans breach Go Media Stadium - again
Warriors

Warriors dealt shock defeat as Titans breach Go Media Stadium - again



Latest from Hawkes Bay Today

'Required to arrest': Inside police's new retail-crime patrols
Hawkes Bay Today

'Required to arrest': Inside police's new retail-crime patrols

'It’s not the value that we’re looking at. It’s the recidivism. Report it all.'

25 Jul 07:15 PM
Premium
Premium
EIT’s beginnings and debunking a Hawke’s Bay myth: Michael Fowler
Opinion

EIT’s beginnings and debunking a Hawke’s Bay myth: Michael Fowler

25 Jul 07:00 PM
Daisy Coles: An expat's daydream for a perfect Napier day
Opinion

Daisy Coles: An expat's daydream for a perfect Napier day

25 Jul 06:00 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Hawke's Bay Today e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Hawke's Bay Today
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • NZME Events
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search