A wee bit of context: this is New Zealand. We have a general election coming up in September and we are staring down the barrel of another neoliberal term of pathetic social injustice- expanding poverty, homelessness and environmental degradation at the hands of the farming and mining lobby. Borrowing to buy groceries, watching your/your childrens' opportunities for secure employment and housing recede into the distance, our waterways choked with pollutants and our natural resources battered into nothingness; these are our everyday realities now. They might sound familiar to overseas punters and I want you to really, really understand that this is the whole fucking world and the picture you're being sold of this country by interested parties is complete and utter bollocks.
Recently, Green Party co-head Metiria Turei (now a lawyer) admitted lying about her situation whilst on a benefit (what we call welfare in NZ) in order to receive enough money to actually live on (she didn't tell welfare about her flatmates). I'm going to stick my hand up and say I don't know a single person who hasn't done this to one extent or another as a way of negotiating their survival while at the mercy of a system designed to be punitive and utterly inadequate. All while listening to plenty of rich people bragging about their trusts and their offshore shit and their tax-dodging workarounds.
So fuck everyone clutching their pearls about this. I've lived here long enough to know who's grifting our collective resources on a massive scale out of sheer fucking gluttony and who is just trying to make it into next week in an economic and social system stacked against anyone who's not already wealth-adjacent.
Toby Morris is a local artist with a social conscience and the ability to neatly encapsulate one of the ugliest facets of NZ society; its frustratingly glib and utterly internecine battle with itself. Its need to blame the victims of neoliberal insanity for the latter's inevitable outcomes. I hope he doesn't mind that I boosted his shit, because I'd like you to see it.
Recently, Green Party co-head Metiria Turei (now a lawyer) admitted lying about her situation whilst on a benefit (what we call welfare in NZ) in order to receive enough money to actually live on (she didn't tell welfare about her flatmates). I'm going to stick my hand up and say I don't know a single person who hasn't done this to one extent or another as a way of negotiating their survival while at the mercy of a system designed to be punitive and utterly inadequate. All while listening to plenty of rich people bragging about their trusts and their offshore shit and their tax-dodging workarounds.
So fuck everyone clutching their pearls about this. I've lived here long enough to know who's grifting our collective resources on a massive scale out of sheer fucking gluttony and who is just trying to make it into next week in an economic and social system stacked against anyone who's not already wealth-adjacent.
Toby Morris is a local artist with a social conscience and the ability to neatly encapsulate one of the ugliest facets of NZ society; its frustratingly glib and utterly internecine battle with itself. Its need to blame the victims of neoliberal insanity for the latter's inevitable outcomes. I hope he doesn't mind that I boosted his shit, because I'd like you to see it.
Thank you for listening. Share this and give Toby a hand job or something on Twitter. And vote, fellow NZenders. Ideally Labour or Green. The time for sitting on your fat arse and nekk weekin is gone.
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