I probably don’t have a lot to add to what’s already been said about Andrew Little’s state of the nation speech this morning.
It was sensible and forward-looking – an excellent rejoinder to the “Angry Andy” meme which Cameron Slater has been desperately trying to build.
It was focused on jobs – something which seems like it should be natural to the Labour Party but which (for any of a vast number of reasons which are regularly argued on leftwing blogs) hasn’t got a lot of cut-through in recent years.
There was the acknowledgement of the importance of working with business, and especially small business, to create jobs – but concrete points about job security and particularly the scrapping of zero-hour contracts to make it clear that we’re not working within the rightwing “deregulate them and they will come” model. (Which won’t really come as a surprise to the Farrars or Hootons of the world who were quick to demand that Labour scrap its policy on unfair, never-created-any-actual-jobs 90-day trials.)
The Labour Party – and you could argue the wider NZ left – is at the start of a three-year project to rebuild our movement and win in the 2017 general election. I reckon we’re off to a pretty good start.
Stephanie Rodgers 