ACT-dominated Luxon Government would be a disaster for working people

The Mar­itime Union says a late shift in the polls indi­cates that New Zealand work­ers are becom­ing aware of the dan­gers of a change of Gov­ern­ment and extreme right-wing poli­cies. 

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the major­i­ty of New Zealan­ders are work­ing peo­ple who need pro-work­er poli­cies.

“We are sound­ing the alarm that a Christo­pher Lux­on Gov­ern­ment would be dom­i­nat­ed by the ACT Par­ty and would wage war on work­ers.”

He says the destruc­tion of Fair Pay Agree­ments and re-intro­duc­tion of 90 Day Tri­als would push down wages and con­di­tions for New Zealand’s most under­val­ued essen­tial work­ers.

Even more extreme ACT poli­cies include a three-year freeze on ris­es in the min­i­mum wage and attacks on sick leave enti­tle­ments would plunge thou­sands into finan­cial hard­ship and pover­ty.

“Christo­pher Lux­on is out of touch with the strug­gles of the work­ing class of Aotearoa New Zealand. He does not under­stand the strug­gles of every­day peo­ple. He will give ACT what­ev­er they want to get the num­bers he needs.”

“Tax cuts for mega land­lords, cuts to pub­lic ser­vices, and mak­ing life hard­er for work­ers – this is not a pos­i­tive vision and will make our soci­ety less fair, less suc­cess­ful and less car­ing.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the lat­est analy­sis of Nation­al Par­ty tax pol­i­cy shows any ben­e­fits would large­ly flow to the already wealthy, not the sup­posed squeezed mid­dle.

“The mes­sage from the Mar­itime Union to our mem­bers and all work­ers and their whanau is to use your vote to build a bet­ter future for your­self.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the National–ACT com­bo also have a back­ward and out­mod­ed approach to trans­port pol­i­cy.

“It is clear that there needs to be a mode shift to resilient and low emis­sion modes like coastal ship­ping but National–ACT have no solu­tions for a rapid­ly chang­ing world.”

In con­trast, Mr Har­ri­son says sub­stan­tial progress in the ports and ship­ping sec­tor in the last term needs to be con­tin­ued under a Labour-led Gov­ern­ment.

He says three key suc­cess­es of the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment have been in build­ing coastal ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty, improv­ing health and safe­ty through the Ports Health and Safe­ty Lead­er­ship Group, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for improved con­di­tions in the indus­try through Fair Pay Agree­ments.