May
19th, 2011, was a day of protest against the planned cuts that were
expected to be announced in the Budget that afternoon. It had been
organised by the Council of Trade Unions and the Labour Party.
The
Greens also took an active part in the protest. In Wellington the
protest was held outside Parliament. The speeches were
standard electioneering stuff. Helen Kelly, the leader of the
Council of Trade Unions, spoke of the impact of government
legislation on workers and how cuts would severely impact on the
public service.
Another
speaker spoke of the impact of the cuts to Early Childhood Education
(ECE) and the reduction of qualified ECE teachers to 80% of all ECE
staff and how it compromises child care.
The
Greens Co-Leader Meteria Turei also spoke in which she criticised the
Budget for doing nothing for most New Zealanders. Turei pushed for a
more environmentally sustainable Budget that promoted sustainable job
growth, an increase in research and development finance and the
restoration of the Training Incentive Allowance. As always the
greens never explain how sustainability can be achieved under
capitalism!
Phil
Goff
Phil
Goff, the leader of the Labour Party, gave a speech that was well
received but which didn’t reveal much, except he made specific
reference to a Labour and Greens coalition government. This is
either a reflection of a possible move to the Left by Labour or a
possible move to the Right by the Greens. As expected, his attacks
were against the cuts to the programmes introduced by Labour,
including Working for Families and Kiwisaver. The speech was clearly
aimed at the Labour faithful who seemed to make up the majority of
the crowd.
The
number of protesters would’ve been about a thousand at the most and
were made up of union members from Finsec, the Public Service
Association, the Nurses Federation, the Service and Food Workers
Union, the Maritime Workers Union and some smaller unions.
The
Council of Trade Unions and the Labour Party don’t appear to have
understood that people are generally disillusioned with the current
economic, political and social system under which we operate under.
The working class might not be chanting “Down with Capitalism!”
at the moment but they know the system is rotten and they want real
change.
Instead
of being offered change they are getting promises that are so lame
(and safe) that even the National Party’s mouthpiece The Dominion
Post newspaper would’ve found nothing particularly scary with what
Labour and the Greens said at the protest.
Reality
As
I was watching one of the speeches a forty-something woman told me
she had gone down to Work and Income for a food grant for herself and
her son but they refused to give her one so she went to a loan shark
to get money and they charged her 415% interest on a $40 loan. So
she has to pay back $206! And the most frightening part is that this
isn’t unusual but becoming increasingly common. The difference
between now and the mid-2000s is that it’s not just beneficiaries
like person mentioned but working people being caught out in the
vicious debt-poverty trap.
How
is a speech condemning the tax cuts for the wealthy going to help
people who can’t even afford to put food on their tables? Goff
isn’t wrong to condemn the tax cuts for the wealthy but fiddling
around with the tax system is not going to make the slightest scrap
of difference for people who are forced to pawn off everything they have
to pay for food to feed themselves and their families.
Militant
Action Needed
Developing
and co-coordinating militant action is the best way right now for the
trade unions and the Labour Party to bring home to the bosses and the
government that people have had enough.
More
rigorous socialist policies need to be pursued by the Labour Party
leadership and its delegates because New Zealand workers are tired of
a Labour Party that have no policies that distinguish them from the
National Party in any great way and which lacks any type of vision,
let alone a reformist (social democratic) or Socialist one.
Equally
important is that workers don’t want to be told by career
bureaucrats in the Labour Party or the trade unions what’s good for
them. Workers want to have a real say in the way things are done in
this country. Not just in the work place but also in the way
government operates.
Finally,
are ‘May Day’ speeches from the Labour and trade union leaders enough
to win the general election without solid socialist policies to back
it up?
The
polls suggest not!