The term “Overton Window” was coined by the US political scientist Joseph Overton, and it refers to the policies deemed to be politically acceptable at any given point in time. Overton’s aim was to widen that window. In New Zealand, the window of discourse in Parliament and the media alike, has been extremely narrow for several decades. The neo-liberal orthodoxy is observed by both major parties, with minor variations. Even a centre-left government with a large parliamentary majority has decided it cannot promote a capital gains tax or a wealth tax. Imposing any new tax at all – even to generate the revenue required to meet pressing social needs - is considered to be politically impossible.

In similar vein, and while the consensus viewpoint worries itself sick about how wage increases will fuel inflation, there is little or no discourse about the role that excessive profits (and price gouging) may be playing in the inflation picture. Instead, mainstream economists from Lawrence Summers and his Little Sir Echo (aka Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr) are touting the “need” for unemployment to rise – Summers says “skyrocket” - if inflation is to be brought under control. Here’s Orr in the RBNZ’s most recent monetary statement:

A wide range of indicators continue to point to employment being above its maximum sustainable level.

Hold on, though. Is it socially desirable for the unemployed to be used in this way, as unpaid inflation fighters? Again, there’s not much discussion as to who benefits, who pays the price, and who gets to sit comfortably on the sidelines when such a narrow range of options is deemed to be practical by the Sensible Gentlemen of commerce who set the policy boundaries.

Nursing, with a grudge

As this column pointed out yesterday, despite there being a staffing crisis in the health system, we can’t even make an immigration decision to put foreign nurses on the ‘immediate residency” priority list rather than making them wait out two years on the job to see whether they will be allowed to make a home here. No wonder so many foreign nurses – including the ones trained here – are choosing to work instead in other countries where (a) they get paid more. and more importantly (b) they qualify for immediate residency.

The paranoid (and racist) assumption by the Immigration Service is that the likes of Indian and/or Filipino nurses will act in bad faith, get their residency, bring in their families and then head away offshore – despite the lack of evidence for this being a significant concern. The underlying racism at work here seems to be a legacy of the hostility in official quarters nearly a decade ago, after fee-paying Indian students were lured to New Zealand by a promise of possible residency, only for most to be callously kicked out when too many of them came here.

If we’re very lucky, this country’s renewed efforts to train more local nurses will gradually improve the staffing situation by the middle and end of this decade. Yet there seems to be no ability to conceive of, let alone implement a response to the current nursing crisis in public health. Contrast the bunker mentality of Health Minister Andrew Little with the sweeping subsidy programme for nurses across the Tasman, that the state of Victoria has just announced:

The Victorian government on Sunday announced it would spend $270 million to recruit and train thousands of nurses and midwives as part of a new initiative. Under the five-year program, all new domestic students enrolling in a professional-entry nursing and midwifery course in 2023 and 2024 will receive a scholarship of up to $16,500 to cover course costs. Students will receive $9000 over their three years of study and the remaining $7500 would be paid off if they work in the Victorian public health services for two years.

We will pay their entire HECS [Higher Education Contribution] debt," Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters at the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation office in Melbourne. A scholarship of roughly $10,000 will also be provided to thousands of postgraduate nurses to complete studies in specialist areas, including intensive care, emergency, paediatrics and cancer care.

Add that to the $4.5 billion recruitment drive that the New South Wales government is putting into attracting and retaining public health workers, and it is easy to see why an overworked, underpaid health workforce that has given its all during the pandemic might now be throwing up its hands and heading offshore. For foreign nurses, New Zealand’s unwillingness to offer residency to them, let alone to the foreign nurses who trained here, is also motivating nurses to look for better treatment elsewhere.

Here, the nurses who are here are continuing to be forced to go on strike to get the level remuneration they deserve and have earned for their efforts during the pandemic The latest example being the nurses in primary care, whose pay still lags behind what the nurses working in public hospitals receive.

Unfortunately, many of New Zealand’s current nursing workforce endured the systematic underfunding of the public health system under the previous National government. Given the prospect of a possible National victory in next year’s election, this raises the odds that the funds required to boost wages and improve work conditions in public health will instead be squandered once again on tax cuts for the wealthiest of New Zealanders.

The wealthy elite who would benefit the most from tax cuts will always be able to access their medical care through the private health sector, while the public health system will once again be allowed to deteriorate on National’s watch. Meaning : the prospect of a change of government is another good reason for nurses to seriously consider the final decision to emigrate – to places where their worth is recognised, and where the pay levels mean they can better afford to pay off their student debt.

Writing off student debt

Talking of student debt… Relatively little media attention has been paid here to the significant moves that the US government has made to cancel student debt. In brief, the Biden administration will cancel up to $US20,000 of student debt.

President Joe Biden announced his administration’s long-awaited student loan forgiveness plan Wednesday, saying it will forgive $10,000 in student loans for borrowers who earned less than $125,000 during the pandemic. People who received Pell Grants, grants to low-income students, while they were enrolled in college will be eligible to have $20,000 in debt forgiven.

The move will be enough to wipe out some student debt entirely: 15 million of the 43 million people with federal loans owe less than $10,000, and those borrowers are typically the most likely to fail to pay back their loans. In all, the plan will eliminate student debt for about 20 million people, according to an analysis provided by the Education Department, and decrease monthly payments by an average of $250 for borrowers with a remaining balance who are on standard 10-year payment plans.

This is significant, life-changing stuff. Sure, it will still require Congressional approval, and the Democrats hold only a razor-thin majority in the Senate. Even so, Biden managed to steer a slimmed down – but still huge - climate change and infrastructure package through the Senate, only a couple of weeks ago. My wider point being… Here in New Zealand, a centre-left majority government is doing nothing that’s remotely as radical as either the state of Victoria, or the Biden administration.

Would this Labour government ever take similar steps to cancel significant amounts of student debt? On its past track record, Labour would probably be terminally gunshy about the risk of triggering a backlash from the previous generation of voters who dutifully paid off their debt. That’s unfortunate. Because we’re now deep into the second term of a government that enjoys a historic majority under MMP, and centre-left voters have every reason to feel deeply disappointed - or angry, even – about what limited use Labour has made of that mandate.

At this week’s post Cabinet press conference for instance, PM Jacinda Ardern chose to brag about the range of strictly temporary measures – eg. the helicopter money that Labour is dishing out in its cost-of-living payments, and the Winter Energy payments for pensioners. An incoming National/ACT government will be certain to sweep away those kinds of handouts in a twinkling.

It comes back to the Overton window. Yes, this government has made some achievements that it will be able to boast about next year on the hustings. If it loses though, the scrapping of the DHB system and the Three Waters reforms (if it holds its nerve) will comprise Labour’s main legacy, along with its largely successful management of the Covid pandemic. Beyond that level though, we’re into gestures like removing interest deductibility for landlords, or the taxing people at a slightly higher rate once their taxable income exceeds $180,000. If it lost an election held tomorrow, only an extremely limited list of achievements would survive this Labour government.

The Greens have to take their share of the blame for the thinly stocked shelf of lasting gains. By and large, the Green Party has chosen to make the preservation of government unity its top priority. On environmental policy and social policy alike, the Greens have played nothing like the radical role that the Act Party plays alongside National. It would be unfair to blame James Shaw entirely for that outcome. One can’t help but feel the Greens will be happier being a virtuous Opposition under Chloe Swarbrick, than they are in their current role (that they chose) as policy passengers.

Yet perhaps… If only they’d dared to rock the boat a lot more this time, it might be easier to imagine them playing a meaningful role in any future centre-left government. A virtuous Opposition? The Greens have been there, done that. Overall, it looks at this point like an opportunity is being lost, out of an excess of tactical timidity. All is not (quite) lost. But the window for making significant centre-left gains is definitely at risk of banging shut once again, for another generation.

Alt-country, alternative realities

At heart, Margo Price’s new single is your standard midtempo rock chugalong, but the video offers a pretty amusing example of what alt-country does these days when it tries to get a little bit freaky. From the git go, the video dives into some of the spooky stuff – Tarot cards, candles, weird camera angles! – in order to augment the song’s sense of personal angst and displacement.

Talking about the tried and true theme of women- in-country paying the price of perennial bad luck…the new “ Born Tough” single by Nikki Lane makes a more convincing job of combining classic rock musical tropes with her determination to survive hard times.

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