Nov 11, 2008

Shift To The Right Continues

It looks as though the right wing faction of the Labour are about to clean up the top jobs with news that a Goff/King ticket looks likely to be unopposed. Hardly generational change but the two are amongst the strongest performance in the Labour caucus.

We hope that this move to the right will mean that we can move to more of a political consensus on areas of policy such as energy and climate change. It would send a strong signal to business and the world of Labour can support improvements to the ETS when they are proposed by the Key Government. That suggests that Labour should be a full part of the decision making process on these changes. Offers by National to work towards a consensus on climate change were rebuffed by the previous Government which somehow thought that they could win more votes by painting National as soft on climate change. We hope National will put annoyance over this issue to one side. This should not be a partisan issue. But changes do need to be made to the policy. Far too many changes were made at last minute without consultation.