NZ POLITICS DAILY: Living in a material world

We are living in a materialist world, and the coming election campaign is going to strongly reflect that.

This statement is not supposed to be a rift on Madonna or hippy politics, but instead a pointer to the fact that the resurgence of materialist-based politics (tax, inflation, inequality, standards of living, asset sales, healthcare, retirement incomes) continues to overshadow the post-materialist politics such as law and order, Treaty issues, the environment, anti-smacking, and sexual politics (prostitution law reform; civil unions), that have dominated all recent elections.

Today’s main political stories are about the economy and Labour’s new tax proposals – what political scientists call materialist issues. Assuming these media stories reflect what people are interested, then voters are concerned about ‘back pocket’ issues more than ever. For example, inflation is said to be at a 21-year high and wage levels are struggling to keep up, and interest rates look set to increase – see: Price rises hurting.

This is re-fueling calls for a higher minimum wage – see: Inflation leads to new calls for $15 minimum wage. Colin James is talking today about materialist issues in his interesting Otago Daily Times column, Social investment for a stronger economy. The Dom Post editorial deals with issues of retirement incomes – Mr Key, explain how you'll sustain superannuation. And, of course, there’s plenty of ongoing discussion about Labour’s innovative capital gains tax proposal.

The most notably news report is about the astonishing fact that last night a TVNZ survey suggested that 43% of New Zealanders support such a tax – see: Support grows for capital gains tax. Labour will be incredibly buoyed by this good news, which somewhat goes against the commentary and analysis about Labour’s poll drop on TVNZ the night before. This apparent contradiction is briefly discussed by Danyl Mclauchlan at The Dim-Post.

But further bad news for Labour also comes out of the same poll – which shows that ‘53% of respondents trust the National Government the most to manage the books, compared to 24% who trust Labour’ – see: National far ahead in trust stakes. This is important stuff, because to a large extent the coming election contest is going to be about which parties are likely to govern in a way to increase our material security.

Labour has done very well one this – creating doubt in voters’ minds about the economic competency of National, but it has so far totally failed to make an impression about it’s own competency. Perhaps this will change if Labour wins the capital gains tax debate. But according to John Minto, Labour’s tax proposal is too boring and mild to truly excite voters. He says ‘a 15% capital gains tax will still mean property investors or speculators will be paying a lower rate of tax than anyone on wages and salaries. Under Goff’s proposal wage and salary earners will still subsidise parasitic speculators’ – see: Bold And Game-Changing? Sadly, No.

At least Labour is firmly focused on the materialist issues, however, unlike the Act Party – see for example, these two very good recent columns: The race is run, Don, so count on economics and ACT cynical and out of touch. It seems that unlike Labour and National, who are living in the materialist political world, the Act Party is still apparently obsessively living in a post-materialist world of ethnicity issues, which is why the party is going to be much less relevant on November 26.

Bryce Edwards, NZPD Editor (bryce.edwards@otago.ac.nz)

Today’s content:

Economy

Dan Parker (TV3): Nats dispute inflation figures

Laura Westbrook (Stuff): Price rises hurting

RadioLIVE: Inflation leads to new calls for $15 minimum wage

Colin James (ODT): Social investment for a stronger economy

No Right Turn: Privatisation undermines transparency

Editorial (Dom Post): Mr Key, explain how you'll sustain super

Audio-visual coverage of the economy

Labour’s capital gains tax

Adam Bennett (NZH): Support grows for capital gains tax