New Zealanders deserve proper healthcare, housing, education and infrastructure.
In order to make that happen, we need an adequate tax system and rational use of debt to invest and expand our productive capacity to actually do things.
This past month, we’ve seen the latest waves of thousands working within the healthcare system striking, from senior doctors to nurses to midwives to healthcare assistants. These professionals don’t do this lightly. They have a clear ask for safe staffing and decent pay, without which we’ll continue to see the flight of talent necessary to hold our public healthcare together burning out or moving overseas.
The healthcare crisis didn’t just happen. Christopher Luxon’s Government came to power, cut a bunch of ‘back office’ staff, which the frontlines warned would mean more administrative workload on them. They went ahead with it, and our frontlines are now dealing with a higher workload and less resourcing. Luxon’s Government then instituted a hiring freeze on healthcare workers.
The teachers, too, have had enough, and made the difficult decision to strike this September as well. No one can say teachers do what they do for the pay cheque or glory. Their working conditions are our children’s learning conditions, and when teachers are sounding the alarm, New Zealanders listen.
Problem is, Luxon’s Government hasn’t, instead deciding to attack the people who uphold our healthcare and education systems — two of the rather foundational things necessary for our country to flourish.
Things don’t have to be this way. Different political decisions can be made to put common sense and the public good first. Instead, we have a Government that punches down on public healthcare workers sounding the alarm.
If we fairly taxed the wealthiest 3%, as the Greens propose, we could cut income taxes for 91% of New Zealanders, and fund free early childhood education, dentistry and GPs, and resource pay equity claims, among so much more. From Auckland Central to across Aotearoa, that’s how we ensure no one falls through the cracks and our country becomes truly resilient.
Speaking of what our country could be, it would be remiss not to mention the 50,000 people who filled the streets of Auckland Central this September calling for our Government to play its role to stop the genocide of Palestinians. Aotearoa New Zealand has historically had independent foreign policy and consistent, principled approaches.
The classic examples are our stances against nuclear testing in the Pacific, originally by the French and then the Americans, and against apartheid South Africa.
Luxon’s Government’s shameful refusal to even recognise one of the two states necessary for the ‘two state solution’ it says it wants — not to mention only recognise the one which is presently massacring innocent people, and record numbers of journalists — is not only a stain on that legacy.
It lays bare that Luxon, Peters and Seymour may not have made those same historical stands against apartheid and nuclear testing.
As the flurry of correspondence I’ve received since has made clear, this decision by these three men does not represent New Zealanders nor our values.
I have written to all Government MPs, formally for a third time, reminding them of their power to set our country on a different course. With my Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill (modelled on the Russia Sanctions Act) in the biscuit tin, all 123 MPs are individually, personally responsible for whether the Bill progresses or not.
With the support of the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Labour, we have 55 of the 61 votes necessary to get the Bill onto the floor of the House. We need just six of 68 Government MPs willing to put our nation’s values of peace and justice ahead of partisan politics and we can correct the course of history. (Chlöe Swarbrick)
Chlöe Swarbrick, T: 09 378 4810, E: chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick
Chlöe Swarbrick: Co-leader of the Green Party and MP for Auckland Central
