All smiles…unless you’re an immigrant.
By Martin Gregory
From 2015, and gathering pace during 2016, an ugly development took place in New Zealand politics: a growing chorus of anti-immigrant rhetoric, with an anti-Asian slant. The rightwing populist New Zealand First has long traded on being anti-immigrant, but Winston Peters’s crowd have now been joined by the Labour Party, some union officials, and, since October, by the Green Party.
It is one thing when rightwing parties resort to immigrant-bashing; in that instance workers are likely to recognise the traditional politics of the enemy. It is quite another when the same type of politics is espoused by unions and parties that workers see as friendly to themselves; then, anti-immigration and racist politics are given credibility; they become ‘common sense’.
Recent articles
Vale Rochelle Kupa
Kua hinga te tōtara i Te Waonui-a-Tāne —The totara has fallen in the forest of Tāne Rochelle Kupa (1963 – 2017), of Tuhoe and Tūwharetoa, was a class fighter, an educationalist, and a campaigner for Māori rights. After fighting an aggressive cancer for two years longer than what doctors predicted, Rochelle died on Wednesday, 22 […]
Labour-Green Budget Responsibility Rules Nonsense
The Labour Party has a death wish. In what looks like a bid to make sure it loses September’s general election, last Friday the Labour-Green alliance launched a major plank of its election platform titled Budget Responsibility Rules. What the Labour Party is saying is that if it wins the election it will hold public […]
Pensions under attack – Superfund not the answer
Under Bill English the National Party has made one major policy change so far as it heads into the general election on 23 September. This is to adopt Labour’s old policy of ratcheting up the age of retirement. Bill English is proposing that from 2037 to 2040 the retirement age will be incrementally increased […]
Mass Action Can Change Society
By Shomi Yoon The mass of ordinary people who can change society. The ruling class, the capitalist media, and academia all stress workers’ powerlessness, and these ideas often filter through to people who want to change the world. The emphasis can get put on heroic individuals, spectacular action designed to ‘shock’ the masses out […]
Wellington students organise against rape culture
by Andy Raba Hundreds of people gathered yesterday outside Parliament to protest rape culture in New Zealand. The action was called by several students from Wellington East Girls College. The protest, a direct response to rape jokes made on facebook by students from Welllington College, was loud, angry, defiant and empowering. Chants of “2,4,6,8 Stop the […]
Cadbury: Fight for every job
Join the rally in the Octagon tomorrow at 11am, and spread the word. This protest, called by the Save Cadbury Community Action Group, is supported by E Tū, the union of Cadbury workers. Amanda Banfield, Vice President for Mondelez in Australasia, claims closing Cadbury in Dunedin is about ‘its long term sustainability’. Try telling […]
Housing battle in Glen Innes
by Joshua Sims and Sam Snell Ioela Niki Rauti is standing firm in the face of property developers. Late 2014 Niki Rauti was served a 90 day eviction notice to vacate the Housing New Zealand state home she has lived in for over twenty years. With support from the local community, young activists and the […]
Keep the ‘European Students Association’ off Auckland University campus!
So Trumpism has hit New Zealand shores. A group calling itself the ‘European Students Association’ is trying to set itself up at the University of Auckland. The group’s website is covered in all the usual muck of the far right, with slogans echoing SS phrases from Nazi Germany and weasley phrases about ‘European culture’. […]
From the archive
Anzac Day: Against the Carnival of Reaction
On Anzac Day 1967, at the height of New Zealand involvement in the ‘American War’ in Vietnam, with New Zealand troops taking part in the suppression of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation, members of the Progressive Youth Movement in Christchurch tried to lay a wreath following the dawn service in memory of those killed by imperialism in Vietnam. They were arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour. Feminists a decade later faced down a media-driven public outcry when they laid wreaths to the victims of sexual violence during war.
Lest we forget? It’s more like lest we remember. Anzac Day serves as a carnival of nationalist reaction, a day of public ritual aimed at promoting forgetting: forgetting the real legacy of New Zealand imperialism and militarism in favour of a sentimental nationalism, an anti-political celebration of national unity. [Read More…]
