Originally Posted by
Blue Skies
Having in the past voted both National & Labour & as a swinging voter, I'm curious why you think its been disastrous under Labour & wasn't under National.
Knowing a fair cross section of people in all socio eco groups, everyone seems to be doing reasonably well. Those whose jobs are gone, like pilots & airline staff seem to have accepted the reality of the world wide Pandemic & quickly adjusted into finding new careers even if it's a step down. The sharemarket is booming, teachers & nurses are better paid & its looking a more realistic career after years of shortages, the Ski fields are crowded with visitors, the rugby's miles better, the Malls are busy, online retail is surging, etc. Obviously tourism sector badly affected but that's the new reality for many places in the world.
At the end of National's term there were so many problems esp in Health, Education & Housing. It was generally recognised (even by Bill English) that National had underfunded & let too many things deteriorate to the point of broken, & had left their large pre election spending program to fix them too late.
The economy was largely based on massive immigration, the exploitation of cheap foreign workers (esp in tourism & agriculture sector) & the exploitation of International students (worthless courses & an army of people to fill cramped sub standard rental apartments which few NZ'ers would put up with).
Auckland was broken, with rapid massive immigration without the supporting infrastructure (which is why its ironical to hear National now claiming they are the party of infrastructure). Roads & motorways jammed, huge traffic congestion , school rolls bursting at the seams without the classrooms to provide for all the new students, shocking hospital waiting lists for cancer & other serious health problems, estimated Auckland was short of 70,000 homes for the increased population, homeless people sleeping & defecating in the doorways of our main retail stores, chronic teacher & nurses shortages due to low pay & unrealistic work loads, huge & rapidly growing income inequality, outrageous 3rd world diseases like rheumatic fever crippling young children, hospital & school buildings leaking, increasing gambling addiction with rapid proliferation of pokie machines & alcohol outlets in vulnerable communities, the farcically appalling SkyCity deal, the blind eye to the free buses & McDoanld's vouchers SkyCity was using to entice vulnerable people from South Auckland suburbs to SkyCity & gamble on the pokie machines, the debacle over meth contamination of houses & a whole industry built on unessesarily decontaminating perfectly ok houses with the tragic consequences for many that caused, Christchurch Rebuild mess (Brownlee detested by many in CHC) , humiliating Transmission Gully Project etc etc, I could go on & on.
So it wasn't all perfect under National by any means & while some of those issues were complex & difficult, some were inexcusably simple to fix.
And this isn't intended as a criticism of National but just curious why you express such strong views that National was so great but Labour's been a disaster. (& no need to mention Kiwibuild again, which agreed has been unable to solve the existing housing problem.)