Your Vote Will Determine the Values and Priorities of the next Government, so What're you Going to Do With it? / A.J Hendry

Where will you stand this election?

In a way that is the question we are all asking ourselves

Or perhaps, to put it more succinctly, who will you stand with.

Left, right, liberal, conservative, none of that really matters. What matters is who we place ourselves next too.

Our nation faces an economic catastrophe, we are in a recession, regardless of who forms the next government we will face a massive debt, how we face this challenge matters.

Will we double down, hold tight, try not to rock the boat and just hope the storm passes over and we get back to normal?

Or will we have the courage to stand with those our society has pushed to the margins? The courage to dream of a future that is focused not on building back what was, but on building back what could be!

Of building a nation where the health of the economy and the health of our people weren't in tension with one another. To dream of a world where we harnessed the creative imagination that exists in this country, where we constructed a society and an economy where people, were truly at its centre. A future where we didn't ask ourselves, can we really afford to house the homeless, or care for the sick, or feed those who are hungry, a future where care for one another wasn't a question, but a given.

Covid 19 has given us an opportunity.

An opportunity to recognize something that has been evident to many on the margins of our society for generations.

Our economy is broken. Capitalism, with its myth of trickle down economics, and the glorious benefits of the free market, has failed. And our whānau are being exploited, abused and neglected as a result.

Now, you might immediately think, well what's the alternative? Isn't this the best system we've got?

It might be.

But, just because something is the best we have, isn't an excuse for retaining it. Especially when that system is at the centre of so much injustice and exploitation.

Nothing demonstrates the failure and injustice of the free market in Aotearoa as much as say the housing market. We currently have a rental market that is largely unregulated. Landlord's have been allowed to leave their rental properties cold and damp, and then charge you over 50% of your income, and (as we heard on the young voter's debate recently) be excused cos hey, that's just the free market. Meanwhile, 30,000 kids are hospitalized each year due to preventable, housing related illnesses, and 20 kids die every year due to the issues relating to their housing.

And when this current Government attempts to bring in even the slightest regulation (regulation which is long over due and perhaps far to conservative), there is push back.

An economy that allows the exploitation, and marginalization of those made most vulnerable in our society, is an economy that needs to be abolished.

It is wrong.

It is unjust.

And it's time to go.

I'm under no illusion that transforming our economic system is something that can happen over night. But, I also do not accept that we should wait for a "better time" to start.

If something is broken you fix it. If something is dead, you bury it. If something is poisoning you, you stop drinking it.

The brand of neo-liberal capitalism that runs our society is killing our nation's soul.

To allow financial gain at the expense of our own children's lives, is abhorrent.

So we come back to this election.

How we vote today will determine the values and priorities of the government for the next three years. We can vote for "economic stability" and "sensibility" (which are just code for the status quo), or we can vote for transformation, for parties and policies that have put a line in the sand, and are committed to care and concern for those made to be vulnerable within our society.

There is a narrative within our culture that tells us that when we vote, we should vote for the party that best represents us, and will most surely look after our own interests.

As a person of faith, and as a follower of Jesus, I think I'm called a different way. I believe that my faith calls me to vote not for myself, or my own interests, but for my neighbor. For those who we have been marginalized by our societies greed. For those who already bear the crushing weight of past economic expansion and growth, and now in a recession, are set to a pay the heaviest price of the rebuild.

The Christian scriptures call us all to place our priority on love for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed.

Human beings are not created to make cold, calculated decisions about economic growth, detached from the reality of human experience. We are created to be in community, to love one another, to honor the dignity of human life within each other.

But, whether you share my faith or not, we cannot say that we are a people bound together by the values of Kindness, nor can we say we are a people who are for Life, if we continue to allow the expansion of an economic system which devalues, and demeans human life.

This election, your vote matters. You can either cast it in solidarity with those on the margins, or you can cast it for the status quo.

Only you can decide where you place your feet

The choice is yours.

A.J. Hendry