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# Jacinda’s Dilemma
- URL: https://goodoil.news/jacindas-dilemma/
- Published: 2020-11-15T00:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2020-11-15T21:37:55.000Z
- Author: Kevin
- Tags: Featured, NZ, NZ Politics, Politics, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 02:38

Having an absolute mandate comes with a price. This article from [RNZ](https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018771981/why-is-labour-putting-the-brakes-on-its-own-political-capital?ref=goodoil.news) illustrates why.

> The Labour Party has just swept to the most convincing election victory New Zealand has seen in a generation.  
>  
> But with many of the party’s own preferences now lying dead in the water after failed referendums and past hard-nosed coalition negotiations, is the party in danger of abandoning its transformative pledge in a quest for power for power’s sake?   
>  
> \[…\]With a left-leaning bloc now firmly in charge of the House of Representatives, this is arguably the biggest mandate a government has ever had to help reduce that gap.  
>  
> But David Cormack says Labour’s track record on potentially vote-losing issues doesn’t fill him with confidence that the government will pull all the levers at its disposal – or stick to its ideological guns – when faced with tough choices.   
>  
> “They straitjacket themselves – or, the prime minister straitjackets the Labour Party. She rules things out.

> “She ruled out a capital gains tax, she ruled out a wealth tax, she said that \[cannabis\] legalisation is now off the table, which is just ridiculous and short-sighted.”

I don’t get it either. I get that most kiwis don’t want to see cannabis dispensaries. But that doesn’t mean most kiwis aren’t willing to accept social sales and cannabis clubs for example.

> \[…\]Jacinda Ardern has already ruled out a capital gains tax as long as she’s prime minister.   
>  
> Ardern has been accused of not properly using her “political capital” – she’s the most popular prime minister since John Key’s heyday – and Cormack says the party is paying too much attention to focus groups and polls, and too little attention to formulating, and acting, according to its own ideology.  
>  
> But is the purpose of a government to lead? Or to reflect the will of its people?

The purpose of a government is to represent and lead. One problem for this government is that they don’t have New Zealand First as an excuse any more. Before they could, as a hypothetical example, promise all state tenants free rent for a year and then say, “Winston hand-braked us,” when they couldn’t fulfill that promise.

Now the government has to either try and fulfill their promises and expectations (and see us head towards becoming another [Venezuela](https://goodoil.news/will-democratic-socialism-turn-us-into-aoteazuela/)) or admit that they had no intention of doing what they promised.

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