It is pretty obvious that the NZ voting system is more than a tad loaded toward ensuring ongoing wealth transfer towards the already privileged (on and offshore) while taxing those scraping by even if they only get pitiful Dollars per week.
Also to obstruct meaningful redirection from the big harm industries (fossil fuels, tobacco, agriculture) which thrive in the face of national wellbeing by scapegoating solutions and having a choke-hold on politics by getting dubious front and backdoor free passes, and brainwashing those in rural areas, over-representation in ads and on media generally.
This was my problem with Hipkins as PM last time. His efforts to differentiate himself from PM Ardern instantly eroded a lot of the ethical core of common sense even he had been spouting in his previous roles, and it felt like a big handover to National with a Labour badge pinned on top.
But I also recall PM Ardern, at the height of covid, seemingly prioritising permissions to hunt, gamble on greyhound racing, casinos (often fronts for money laundering at least overseas) etc.
NZ has animal abuse right at the core of its culture, to the extent that I recall a RNZ presenter saying on air that to save on vet bills, he took his dog into woods and shot it in the head ... and not a whiff of scandal emerged.
Vulnerable people are never valued or looked after properly in cultures that treat animals so badly, especially not under current distorted forms of capitalism. There is a direct parallel for humans, such as the elderly we all become, because the first thing right wing parties do is to up division using dehumanising rhetoric ... and fossil fuels and dubious billionaires buy that to weaken population by division.
Change starts with admitting that men caring for large numbers of animals are not psychologically screened for signs of psychopathy. Then realising you pay into that by eating animal products.
#nz #nzpol #dehumanisation #farright #extremepolicies #nztreaty #nzanimal