https://grist.org/politics/house-passes-the-inflation-reduct...
The biggest Climate Bill of your life - But What does it do!? -- vlogbrothers
For example, Labour banned guns, insulated and ventilated cold/moldy rental homes, vaccinated >90% of the population (while simultaneously keeping covid at bay until that was achived), and a lot more https://old.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/wvifwk/so_what_...
They also embarked on a massive program to fix the water quality issues you mentioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Waters_reform_programme
So, nannies they may be, layabouts they are not.
Does it not follow that when inflation strikes, poverty increases, because the same wages buy less food? And have Labour not acted strongly against the most damaging parts of poverty, with the new insulation and ventilation policies and subsidies, the winter energy payments, and the free school lunches?
We can blame Labour for many things, like failing to act quickly enough to alleviate the housing crisis, but to blame them for global inflation seems like tabloid news and not critical thought.
tl;dr: they banned >.22 semi-autos.
I've always been deeply frustrated at Green's unwillingness to work with National. By playing kingmaker like NZ First did, the party would have had much more impact on the environment, had their primary focus actually been environment.
I know that this would never happen because Green is not an environmental party but an actual left wing party that a Labour should have been instead of...generally doing nothing.
Or that they purged the blue-greens cos Judith Collins.
I'd like a liberal green party a la Switzerland, as the Greens are too far left for my centre-left self.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-air-nz-boss-christopher...
I have very little hope that our government will improve no matter who is voted in. They seem determined to slowly make things worse, not matter what direction they pick.
[1]: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ...
We're currently under a Labour majority (though James Shaw - the environment minister is Green).
There's a bit of a swing back toward National, hobbled in a very large part by their own incompetence, but this will go nowhere if they get back into power.
As an example of their attitudes, last time they were in it was found that basically every body of water in the country had pollution levels in excess of defined quality standards.
Their solution was to change the standards (I'm not sure if the subsequent backlash changed their minds) so that the water was no longer polluted (by definition).
Am I suggesting that we do nothing? No, but unless there's buy in from across the political spectrum (there won't be) I struggle to see how this can acheive anything.