National continues to warn of the dangers of a Labour government pushed into implementing radical policies by the Greens, while the Greens keep saying they would push Labour into being ‘bolder’.
This may have the reverse effect to what both parties want – more people voting for Labour to reduce or eliminate Green influence. And going by recent polls there’s a real possibility Labour could get enough votes to either govern alone, or if they choose to govern with a majority but with a weakened Green Party in coalition.
Voting for National will probably do nothing but reduce their embarrassment a bit, they look a long way from challenging Labour even with ACT.
Voting Green will increase the chances of them making the threshold, and if the manage that it will increase the chances of Labour requiring Green support and increase Green leverage in policy negotiations.
ODT: Labour ‘cannot govern alone’: Greens
The Greens are warning their supporters that Labour “cannot govern alone”, and their party is the only one bold enough to meet the challenges New Zealand faces.
And, despite repeated rebuffs by Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, party co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw say a wealth tax is still firmly on the table if Greens negotiate with Labour post-election.
“They can say what they need to in an [election] campaign,” Davidson said when asked about Ardern’s repeated flat-out rejection of the plan.
That keeps feeding National ammunition to attack Labour with, which Judith Collins has been doing.
Davidson said the fact that National has been hammering this policy so hard was a “sign of their desperation”.
“It has become alarmingly clear that the priority of National, and the other smaller parties, is not to keep us safe … but to divide us, and to make us scared, in the pursuit of power,” she said during her speech.
In his speech, Shaw made something of a call to action to his supporters.
“At this election, I can confidently say that the Green Party is the only party putting forward proposals that are actually bold enough to meet the scale of the challenges we face.”
And Davidson took it further: “Labour cannot govern alone.”
“Unchallenged decisions can mean bad decisions, and with the Greens at the decision-making table, we’ll make sure that we truly face the challenges we’ve been ignoring for too long.”
This is a contrast to last election when Greens went out of their way to play down concerns about what influence they might have on Labour in government.
Green survival depends on getting 5%, so they are having to compete with Labour for votes.
Collins has kept trying to hammer Labour, repeatedly insisting that the Green wealth tax would be a certainty. RNZ: Judith Collins says Greens ‘unemployable’ in latest wealth tax attack
Collins has spent much of her time in recent days warning voters about the Greens’ proposed wealth tax, arguing Labour leader Jacinda Ardern would break her promise not to introduce it.
Regardless of National’s position, Ardern says not is not the time for experimental taxes.
“One of the reasons we have ruled out the Green Party policy is because no other country has this form of taxation. Now is not the time to be experimenting with tax policy when we need to focus on our economic recovery.”
Collins would not budge, saying she believed her concerns were very real, and rejecting the claims of desperation.
“No, I think they’re very real … she shouldn’t go into name calling. “
She took her attacks on the Green Party further still, saying the Greens “didn’t really pay taxes before entering Parliament”.
“Well, most of them are unemployable I always thought. The whole lot of them. Don’t mean to be nasty but there we go, it’s the truth.”
She says having co-leader Marama Davidson as deputy prime minister “would be challenging for the country”.
The role of Deputy Prime Minister has no more power than any other Minister. All they have to do is occasionally fill in for the Prime Minister. Winston Peters did it this term and simply carried out a caretaker role. He had far more power in coalition negotiations.
I’m not a fan of Davidson at all, but I have no concerns with her becoming Deputy PM.
There is also one MP who is still supporting Collins:
But that’s false. Voting National instead of Labour would increase the chances of Greens having more influence. Voting Labour instead of National is the most effective way of reducing Green influence.