Garry at end of 2025…

This year has been a challenging one for the Tuesday Club. I have been working hard on (frustratingly slowly) recovering from a stroke. Rosemary at the same time poured enormous effort being a coordinator, with Emily Caygill and others, of the campaign for the People’s Choice,for the local body elections and for the Green Party. Next year we hope to be more active with the Tuesday Club!

In my opinion this would have to be the least compassionate government, with the most useless leader, that I can remember. When the PM views it as more important to attend the opening of the Ikea shop in Auckland than stand alongside communities as they flooded around NZ; or where fires threatened local livelihoods; or relating to people just struggling; or supporting existing businesses which may not be shiny or have a founder living as a tax refugee in Switzerland. Christopher Luxon must go. He demonstrates that the gulf between operating in a corporate business is fundamentally different from being a politician; and for some, like him, an impossible one to bridge. If he listens to the advice of Ruth Richardson and the Taxpayers Union (which is a ghastly abuse of the term “union”) and cuts further, then increasingly NZ’ers will suffer and more of our young people will head overseas.

Here’s a quote from a satirical senator of ancient Rome, Gaius Petronius Aribiter:

We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.

I am also concerned about the Labour Party. A party that I served loyally for 43 years before I cut up my membership card. I joined the Party after I attended Norman Kirk’s last public address. He went back to Wellington and died a few weeks later. I have never forgotten what he once said: 

“there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for.”  

I wonder if our political parties have forgotten about this profound list as they bash each other up and spend their time reinforcing the privileges of the rich. Just because I left the Party, as did most of my friends, does not make me an enemy. The Party needs to drop its defensive approach to ideas which might make it look brave and forward looking. Those of us who have left aren’t the enemy. We just want Labour to be less “grey porridge” and more driving alternative economic solutions which benefit all, not the few.

I am deeply disappointed with Chris Hipkins as leader. His natural caution and apparent inability to be brave makes him a potential losing party leader, again. He appears to have the right values, but he’s just pathetic. Labour has risen in the polls because they have sat mute whilst this government ruined everything and have basically said nothing and allowed the public to forget what they are like.

The Labour Party remains a believer in neo-liberal economics. Their finance spokesperson is just a nice, easy to relate to, technocrat. I get fed up with economics spokespeople talking as if the economy is like a family’s finances. It’s not.

The fact the Party is standing an excellent candidate, Craig Rennie, against a sitting Green MP is a bad way to treat the natural coalition party for Labour. Labour should be bringing Rennie down to Christchurch Central, to bring a seriously good candidate to rebuild the MP base in a city which has been traditionally loyal to Labour.

After the pay equity bill was introduced recently an immigrant wrote The migrant dream? My mum’s pay equity claim was cancelled and I got a tax cut | The Spinoff. Let us not forget what he wrote:

I am a product of the migrant dream. The day of my graduation from law school, my mother wept tears of joy. We had made it. Her sacrifice, determination and courage had been worthwhile. I now find myself in the bizarre situation where I’ve received a tax cut thanks to this government’s policies, while my mother’s pay equity claim has been extinguished.  I don’t think this is the way the migrant dream is realised. 

There’s a lot of challenges on the list above for us to consider. Many of those of us in the Tuesday Club are older. I try and live my life accepting that I am paid a pension by the government so I have time to work hard to make this a better place for our children, grandchildren, relatives, or the people who are struggling in our society. The Tuesday Club reminds me regularly about how I can do that. I want us to put a great effort into educating young people what a decent society looks like at the Tuesday Club.