Date: Mon, 25 Nov 96 08:15:28    
Subject: M-G: New Zealand elections


A victory for the Right??

The left must unite and fight!  

The election was about the bosses restoring peoples faith in parliament and 
at the same time blocking parliament from doing a `u' turn on the economy. 
The changes of the last 12 years were not the will of the majority. 
Governments ratted on their promises and left their loyal supporters highly 
pissed off. MMP is supposed to make sure that future governments act only 
with majority support. And so restore the illusion that the majority rules. 
The first objective has been met for now. The 88% turnout shows that people 
have renewed their hopes in parliament.  It remains to be seen how long this 
will last. 
The second objective is not so clear. Whatever government comes into office, 
it will have to govern with, or split, NZ First. The vote swing from the 
left to the centre, where NZ First stands for individualism against the 
collectivism of the left, and to the far right ACT party, makes sure that 
the ideological standard of the new right counter-revolution will be raised 
in parliament. This together with the blunders made on the left which saw 
particularly their Maori support move to NZ First, makes it much more 
difficult to challenge the counter-reforms of the last 12 years.  But 
challenged they must be.

 The counter-revolution of the last twelve years has left the country 
bitterly divided and polarised along class lines. The election result which 
puts NZ First in the key pivotal role will initially moderate these left and 
right poles, and prevent "extreme" change. That is, unless the left regroups 
and takes up the fight to split NZ First and create a left majority 
government.

The `right' constituency.
About one-third of the country goes along with the supposed benefits of the 
last 12 years. The election results showed that National retained its 
support. National has turned itself more into a party of the centre, 
creating a defacto coalition government with United which wanted to moderate 
the social impact of these reforms. This was why ACT was formed to prod 
National to "finish the business". 
But there a good reasons why National cannot do this with NZ First in tow. 
NZ First is a protest party of those who have missed out. But they dont want 
to undo the counter-revolution, but they do want to find a place for 
themselves. This means putting some limits on profits which big business 
would find unacceptable. Yet such a government would not do a "u" turn which 
is the bosses biggest fear.
   That is why National plus NZ First and ACT could form a  government and 
continue down the road of embedding the new right counter-revolution with 
some modest "social measures" to accommodate the elderly and Maori. Sooner 
or later however, those protest groups would find that the Nationals agenda 
was in contradiction with their needs.
At the very least NZ First would be an unreliable and unstable partner. That 
would provide an opportunity for the left. 

The `Left' constituency.
Polls have contined to show that on many issues there is about two thirds 
support for a shift back towards more social equity and fairness, supporting 
a left-centre coalition of Labour-Alliance and NZ First. The election 
results showed that this propertion is about right with about 50% of the 
party vote going to these three parties.
But the distribution of votes definitely favoured the right and centre, and 
the left lost to the right because of its refusal to cooperate in strategic 
voting.
There some feeble attempts in the last weeks to sort out left and right 
coalitions.  But the Alliance continued to refuse any electoral deal to stop 
wasted vote splits.  NZ First maintained its centrist purity of refusing to 
commit itself to left or right until after the election. 
Yet polls showed that there was a clear majority of Labour, NZ First and 
Alliance members who favoured a left-centre coalition. Why then, did Labour 
and the Alliance not see the need to adopt a rational approach to strategic 
voting?
Act made damn sure that it got the message out to National supporters to 
give it their list vote. National finally saw the sense in this and 
sabotaged their own Wellington Central candidate to allow Richard Prebble to 
win. National strategic voting for ACT in Auckland where the recovery has 
boosted the governments support, helped to give ACT its 6% overall a support 
and put 8 rightwing ACT candidates into parliament. Led by maddog Prebble 
they will use over opportunity to raise the new right flag.
Peters is.. very anti-worker, against the unions, for the ECA,  for benefit 
cuts and he blames Maori for underachievment.  
In Class struggle we have called for months for the labour movement to adopt 
a rational approach to strategic voting. This is based on our analysis that 
both Labour and the Alliance are bourgeois workers parties which differ in 
degree not kind. Therefore, it was necessary to get as many MP's from both 
parties into power to give them the chance to form a `left' government.  
Obviously, if both Labour and Alliance voters vote for their own candidates, 
one must lose and those votes are wasted. This is why we advocated a workers 
list which in each electorate specified which candidate should be supported, 
and which party. 

In the event, this worked more by accident than design. But as Anderton 
noted on election night, many Alliance voters voted for their candidate 
where they had little chance, and some of them at the same time voted for 
the Labour list. This left the Alliance with only 10% of the party seats.

Lesser Evil opportunism
The whole point of fighting to get Labour and the Alliance well represented 
was not to "Bring down the National Government". This means that Labour and 
the Alliance are a lesser evil, wheras in fact they are not.
This is the position of the CTU who can't bring themselves to say who to 
vote for! TUF came out with a very late call to vote for both Labour and 
Alliance but didnt say how! 
However, most  workers still believe that Labour and the Alliance will be a 
better option that National. They do not yet see the need to junk all of 
these parties and fight for a revolutionary labour party and workers 
government. It is necessary therefore to break workers from their illusions 
in such parties so they can take the next step to fight for a genuine 
workers government. 
Therefore, unlike Workers Power and Socialist Worker, we do not pander 
opportunistically to these illusions and support Labour and the Alliance 
because we expect them to be better at meeting workers needs. We support 
them so as to expose them as betrayers of their working class supporters. 
The reason we support Labour and Alliance is only that they claim to 
represent workers. They promise to help workers.  But will they?  We say no! 
They cannot keep their promises, because no capitalist government can 
deliver social justice to the working class. 
This is because they all have to promise to protect profits first. The only 
way that companies can make profits in NZ which is a weak, dependant 
semi-colony is by cutting their costs to compete internationally and make 
profits. This means cutting not only wages, but taxes which funds welfare 
spending. 
The attacks of the last twelve years  on workers jobs, living standards, and 
social welfare cannot be reversed by any left-centre coalition. This is why 
they promise so little. But before workers can start to fight to remove the 
system that exploits and impoverishes them, they have to get rid of any 
illusions that capitalism can be reformed to be fair and equal even a 
little!


Any `U' turn?

Lets look at Labour and Alliance promises to prove that they are piss-weak, 
and that even they cannot be kept. This is because the most mild tax 
increase to maintain or increase social spending will cause the capitalists 
to go on strike.  Recently Hugh Fletcher, in a speech to the Auckland 
Manufacturers Association, said that any change of government that 
undermined the economic reforms ot he last decade would see capitalists 
taking their money offshore. Investment will fall off, inflation will rise, 
interests rates go up, the exchange rate fall. This would be very bad for 
business. 
The need for Labour and the Alliance to put profits before workers has to be 
demonstrated to workers so that they can overcome any remaining illusions in 
them. 

Popular Front
Because we want Labour and the Alliance to be exposed as betrayers we were 
always opposed to a vote for Peters. This is because Peters party is a 
bourgois party, and a a centre party would be able to offer a coalition to 
Labour. But such a coalition would be a Popular Front, to be avoided at all 
costs.
A popular front is any coalition between bourgeois workers parties and a 
bourgeois party for the sake of becoming the government. Because the left 
needs the centre to stay in power the centre can dictate terms.
That is why we oppose any formal coalition with NZ First because NZ First 
would dicate terms. This would enable Labour and the Alliance to blame 
Peters for having to make compromises to keep Peters onside and to stay in 
power. Peters would force Labour and the Alliance to compromise and water 
down their already piss-weak policies to keep the bosses in NZ. He has 
promised not to put the squeeze on foreign investment because he knows that 
without it the NZ economy would collapse.

Peters anti-union.
Peters is the bosses preferred stooge at the moment because he is able to 
contain and divert much of the discontent created by the massive Rogernomics 
counter-revolution, and focus it on foreigners instead of the capitalist 
class. The Wine Box exposes  a few multi-millionaire cheats, but it leaves 
capitalism itself squeaky clean. Peters is also very anti-worker. He is 
against the unions. He voted for the ECA 1991. He will refuse to repeal it 
and force Labour or the Alliance to drop their promise to abolish the ECA. 
   Peters voted for benefit cuts. His Maori programme is Kaa Awatea, flogged 
>from National. It puts heavy emphasis upon Maori self-help, and blames Maori 
for underachievment. This means that the Maori seats captured from Labour is 
a move to the right towards individual self-help and away from collective 
struggle. 
Peters believes in individual self-reliance which is why his spiritual home 
is still the national party. In any coalition with Labour and the Alliance, 
the needs of workers will be sacrificed the needs of kiwi individuals - "me 
first" -creating a mass of competing individuals who will be the enemy of 
the working class. 

Minority Left government.
That is why we say no coalition with NZ First! Labour and Alliance break 
with Peters, fight for a minority government now! This means acting on the 
initiatives of Anderton and Clark to do a deal now so they can collaborate 
as a minority left government. If Clark refuses, and does a deal with Peters 
which is highly likely,  Anderton would be absolutely correct to stay out of 
the coalition as he intends, not because Labour could not be trusted, that 
is true of both Labour and the Alliance, but because he would be dragged 
into the popular front with Peters.  
But by itself this will not give the left the numbers. Labour and Alliance 
together add up to 50 MPs when they need 60. This requires a tactic to win 

back those members of NZ First who do not belong in a bourgeois party- 
especially the young Maori segment.
While the Maori seats have been dragged to the right by Peters, and coopted 
into Ka Awatea, which accept s that capitalism can deliver to Maori, just 
like Donna Awatere-Huata. But they cannot deliver in reality. This means 
that the most glaring contradiction in politics at the moment is between the 
new NZ First MP's and the Maori who voted for them. It is necessary to 
exploit this contradication, expose Peter's petty-bourgeois politics, and 
split the MP's from NZ First, or the voters from the MP'S who want to become 
new Awatere's.
The way to do this is for Labour and the Alliance to put up the repeal of 
the ECA. This will force NZ First to vote against the measure or split 
between the Maori left under Henare, and the white right under Michael Laws. 
Some Labour may also split further down the track if the regroupment on the 
left starts to adopt the Alliances `economics'. The remaining right rump of 
Moore, Cullen, Gough and Co, would go to the centre. The left majority of 
Clark, Dalziel, Maharey etc will link up with the Alliance.

Are splits healthy?
What will such splits and fusions mean? They mean that voters are more 
demanding and expect to vote for a party that stands for something, and does 
not break its promises. It means that politics becomes more honest as party 
lines take on the shape of the class lines in the class polarised society. 
That's good, because when they do break their promises, there are no 
excuses, and workers can begin to see through the sham of bourgeois 
parliament. 
What if a left-centre re-alignment of Labour/Alliance and NZ First Maori 
happens? Can such a new party be transformed into a revolutionary workers 
party? No. It cannot jump over the fact that it is a parliamentary party 
which limits itself to legislating for change in parliament. Even a real 
workers government which legislates for the expropriation of capitalist 
property cannot do that without the organised power of the working class 
outside parliament. 

Working class power
That is why the real power is outside parliament. It is the bosses economic 
power to strike and shut down industry, and to use the police and the armed 
forces to back them up, and against them, the potential power of the working 
class which creates the wealth to strike, shut down industry, and defend 
itself from the state forces.  That is why a showdown with the capitalist 
class cannot be decided in parliament, but will take place outside over the 
ownership and control of industry.  

 FIGHT FOR A CLASS STRUGGLE  	PLAN  OF  ACTION!
Ø [1]   JOBS FOR ALL! Labour and Alliance's job creation plans are not good 
enough. Start with a 30 hour week for 40 hour pay and reduce the hours until 
everyone who wants a job has a job. Abolish the Employment Contracts Act.

Ø [2]   A LIVING WAGE! Minimum wage of $10 per hour, clear. No youth rates. 
Living benefits, pegged to inflation.  For overtime to be restored, along 
with all other work conditions lost under the ECA. Wages to be adjusted to 
inflation by workers committees. No stand-down for the dole.

Ø [3]   TAX THE RICH! 50% over $50,000 to 100% over $100,000. For a 50% 
capital gains tax on companies and speculators. Confiscation of property of 
corporate tax evaders. 




Ø [4]   FREE HEALTH, EDUCATION, HOUSING, ACC, 24 HOUR CHILD CARE!  Massive 
public investment and works to restore the cuts in the welfare state. No 
user-pays charges by any State supplied services.

Ø [5]   STOP ASSET SALES!  Re-nationalise all privatised assets without 
compensation and under  workers control! Corporatised assets to be put under 

workers control.


Ø [6]   RETURN ALL STOLEN MAORI LAND! Nationalise land and all other energy 
resources with Maori right to traditional claim on use.

Ø [7]   EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL! Regardless of  nationality, race, gender, age 
or sexual orientation. Equal pay for equal work for women and youth. Free 
access to contraception and abortion on demand. 

Ø [8]   CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS!  for Pacific Island and Asian workers in the 
workforce. Amnesty for Pacific Island and Asian over-stayers. Immigration 
under workers control.

Ø [9]   REJECT ALL IMPERIALIST ALLIANCES.  Pull out of ANZUS.  Break all 
military ties with Australia.  NZ out of the UN and UN peacekeeping forces!

Ø [10]   FOR WORKING CLASS OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION, 

DISTRIBUTION AND EXCHANGE!  




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