The only way different political decisions can be made is if New Zealanders at large realise the genuine choices in front of our country this election, Chloe Swarbrick writes. Photo / Chris Gorman
The only way different political decisions can be made is if New Zealanders at large realise the genuine choices in front of our country this election, Chloe Swarbrick writes. Photo / Chris Gorman
Opinion by Chlöe Swarbrick
OPINION
It’s entirely rational to be cynical about politics right now. Our parliamentary landscape is dominated by two legacy parties who consistently demonstrate greater interest in chasing power over purpose.
This past week, Labour ruled out any meaningful moves on a fairer tax system in the immediate afterglow of itsown research showing the wealthiest in this country pay less than half the effective tax rate than the average New Zealander – and polling showing fixing it resonates with more than half the country. Then, National looked at the rental crisis and decided instead of fixing the unfair fundamentals which see 1.4 million renters pay more of their income for older, colder and mouldier houses, they would open up young people’s retirement savings to be raided to continue bidding up already unsustainable rental bonds.
Let’s not even get started on back-of-the-cereal box lock-’em-up “law and order” policies National, Act and Labour all know don’t work for anything other than a sugar-hit soundbite. As Sir Bill English so succinctly put it in 2011, “Prisons are a moral and fiscal failure.”
Not only is there an allergy to evidence in much of our current mainstream politics, but an abscess of long-term structural underinvestment and an abyss of vision.
It doesn’t have to be this way – and it’s easy to forget that without regular people fighting for better, it could be even worse.
Thirty years ago, activists organised against all the odds to break our political duopoly with MMP.
The campaign was powered by regular people who wanted some better options, for and by New Zealanders. They understood that a political duopoly is no better – and in many ways, arguably even worse – than a market duopoly.
In markets, anti-competitive behaviour looks like price-fixing, killing off smaller players and stymying innovation. In politics, it looks like controlling the window of what’s politically possible.
Those profiting from the status quo – politically or economically – don’t have any incentive to change it.
That’s why we shouldn’t expect real progress to come from the top down.
It’s why we must confront the cause behind frustration bubbling across Aotearoa. The problem isn’t fellow New Zealanders. The problem is systemic and cultural norms, entrenched in our politics, that perpetuate and compound inequality, rob potential and generate overwhelming exhaustion.
Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick. Photo / Dean Purcell
The housing, climate, biodiversity and inequality crises aren’t natural phenomena. They’re the consequences of political decisions – and different decisions can be made.
The only way different political decisions can be made is if New Zealanders at large realise the genuine choices in front of our country this election.
When you boil it down, the injustices we’ve become accustomed to don’t make sense on the numbers alone. They reflect who uses their political voice.
There are one and half million renters in Aotearoa, 11 times the approximate 120,000 landlords. There are 400,000 tertiary students. There are two and half million New Zealanders who hold less wealth combined than the top 311 families.
Some argue that pointing out these basic facts – where the majority of political power could lie, if it were realised and used – is somehow divisive. As though political and economic decisions to enable land speculation to the exclusion of recognising housing as a human right somehow isn’t a far more egregious offence. As though a trickle-down economic model that relies on cut-throat competition for diminishing top spots will, self-evidentially, end up with a lot of throats cut.
Much like organisers rallied huge efforts to open up political options three decades ago, nearly 100 years ago in the face of the Great Depression, New Zealanders organised to fight for weekends, public holidays, public healthcare, decent housing and pay and conditions. They argued it could be paid for by those who profited handsomely during a time of hardship for many. After all, we all had to live in this society, and none of us might know when hardship may strike us or someone we loved.
What are we all working so hard for, anyway, if not for genuine comfort and security and connection? If not to ensure the literal planet necessary for our survival maintains conditions conducive to human life?
As my friend and colleague Hon Julie Anne Genter put it recently, responding to the existential threat of climate change is going to take human co-operation at a scale we’ve never seen before.
The reason I’m in politics, and specifically in the Greens, is because I believe to my core that we’re more than capable of working together to build the world we all deserve. The time is now to choose that collective purpose over the mind-numbing pursuit of power for its own sake.
