Vol. 81/No. 39 October 23, 2017
Communist League joins debate in NZ election
After the ballot counts were completed Oct. 7, neither of the main bosses’ parties had won enough seats to form a government. Both are courting the New Zealand First Party, which came in third.
The ruling National Party won 56 seats, Labour 46, New Zealand First 9 and the Greens 8. The Greens say they would join Labour in forming a government if they can get another partner.
Winston Peters, leader of New Zealand First, touts himself as a maverick who speaks for the working class, a supporter of Brexit in the U.K. and fan of Donald Trump in the U.S., and an opponent of most immigration.
“What’s happening in New Zealand is that people have simply had a gutsful,” Peters said at the party’s conference July 17. “They want to know why as working men and women they are so damn poor, and why so many ‘shiny bums’ in Wellington are not doing anything to help them.”
“These ‘shiny bums’ in Wellington and latte sippers in Auckland, who think people in the regions, the middle class and blue collar New Zealanders are thick because they don’t think like them,” he said. “You know, these people who think a BA in sociology studies entitles you to more opinions than a tradeswoman or tradesman.”
Peters has served in both National and Labour Party cabinets.
“The heart of the Communist League campaign was going door to door, where we met and spoke with many hundreds of working people on their doorsteps and in their homes, as well as at factories where we work,” Coggan said. “We found a very open response, including many who are dismayed at what is happening to our class and open to a communist explanation of what we as working people need to do to confront this crisis of capitalism.
Reaching workers on their doorsteps
“Many workers told us we were the only party to visit in person and discuss their opinions and concerns,” she said.
“The party’s views are getting a good hearing on working-class doorsteps,” Tucker said in the Sept. 9 Otago Daily Times. ‘’There is a significant shift in mood.”
The effects on working people of the ongoing capitalist economic crisis became a major issue in the election debate, with both National and Labour pledging to reduce the rate of child poverty, which is estimated to have doubled over the past 35 years.
“But it’s not just ‘child’ poverty,” Tucker told the election night gathering. “It’s the growing impoverishment of layers of the working class of all ages as a result of the relentless assaults of the bosses and their government.”
Both Labour and the New Zealand First parties called for sharp cuts in immigration, saying this was the road for working people here to have a better shot at jobs and housing. The ruling National Party opposed such broad restrictions, saying bosses need a larger labor pool to draw from.
“But immigrant workers aren’t our enemies, or the problem,” Tucker said. “We need to reject scapegoating of immigrants and fight to bring all workers into the unions.
“The capitalist crisis and their profit system, and their drive to make us pay for their problems, is behind the decline in jobs, wages and pensions, the decimation of our unions, and the erosion of the social wage,” he said. “Less than 9 percent of private sector workers in New Zealand are in unions today.”
“The main thing that concerns me is jobs and training, especially for our young people,” Diane Timu, a hospitality worker, told Tucker Aug. 7, when he met with her to discuss the campaign and renew her Militant subscription.
“A central demand of the Communist League campaign,” Tucker said, “is for a massive, government-funded public works program to create the jobs we need at union-rate wages. This could provide work and income for the unemployed and the underemployed and help to unite and strengthen our class.
“Moreover, we could repair and build housing, schools, medical facilities and other things working people need in our communities, and upgrade infrastructure that is in decay,” he said.
Housing was also a major issue in the election debate, with rents and house prices ballooning, resulting in widespread overcrowding and homelessness. Twenty percent of workers spend over half their income on rents or mortgages.
Both National and Labour said they would subsidize housing construction to aid new homebuyers. But in Auckland, where one-third of the population lives, the average price of a house is over $1 million, far beyond the reach of most working people.
“We need to demand that the buying and selling of houses for profit is ended and that quality, affordable, warm rental housing is provided for all as a basic human right,” Coggan told a July 29 protest of 180 in South Auckland called to demand a shelter for homeless people after two died that month in the winter cold. “No one should die alone and cold on the street because of the brutality of the capitalist system.”
Both National and Labour campaigned to increase the number of cops on the street. This was a central issue at an Aug. 21 election debate of 80 people organized by the Ellerslie Residents Association.
“The role of the police in this capitalist society is to protect the wealthy ruling class and their property, and enforce their laws and social relations on working people,” Tucker said. “I believe working people need to change which class rules and build a society based on human solidarity, not the exploitation of labor.”
Tucker noted that one reflection of the social crisis today is an increase in petty crime and violence, often carried out by working people against other workers or small shopkeepers. “This is a problem for our class,” he said.
Tucker disagreed with the other candidates, who said crime is driven by poverty. “It is a product of alienation and the dog-eat-dog values promoted by capitalist society that seek to set worker against worker,” he said. “In times of mass working-class struggle, crime drops, because as workers organize together to fight for our rights, human solidarity grows.
“That’s what young people need, a fighting perspective that offers a way forward — a road to organize and fight the economic, social and moral disaster we face,” he said, “And the prospect of a better life that’s worth fighting for.”
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