To win back Wellington, Labour will have to go to war with the Greens

There is a new class war brewing in Wellington – and if Labour wants to win back the city, it should start paying attention. A meeting of the council’s environment and infrastructure committee last week was the living embodiment of how far the left has drifted from working people.

Councillors were hearing submissions on plans to restrict free parking in Newtown, and install a new bike lane through the suburb.

Residents will have to compete for a limited number of permits, and the proposal will drive out more than 1000 hospital staff who rely on free parking.

Patiently and politely, a succession of healthcare workers explained the upshot of these plans. Underpaid staff are spending a large portion of their incomes on fuel and now parking – about one hour’s pay every day.

Those who still use the street parking will have to shift their car every two hours, using their breaks not to rest or eat.

There is a lack of affordable parking spots available for staff at the hospital – and fees recently doubled to around $120 a month. But for most – travelling in from the Hutt, Wainuiomata, or Porirua – unreliable and inadequate public transport is not an option.

There are also implications for patients who are too unwell to travel by public transport, both to the hospital and the nearby primary health clinic, which serves 10,000 locals. And for residents in one of the lowest socio-economic suburbs, who are now expected to find almost $200 in already-stretched budgets to park kerbside.

The resulting questions from coun

cillors came straight from a plutocratic fantasy land. Earning around $120,000 a year, with a free workplace car park and the luxury of Zooming into meetings, these representatives offered up vague alternatives to nurses and porters: what

about car-pooling, alternative bus route, shuttles?

Wellington has become a one-party state. The Greens have proved they can win, taking both the mayoralty and two previously safe Labour seats.

If it is to reclaim the city, Labour needs to find its voice and a rationale for voters to return. And it requires the party’s supplicant councillors to stop providing political cover for Green mayor Tory Whanau.

The only argument Labour can successfully make is that the Greens cannot govern, and that they betray the principles voters on the left think that they claim to stand for.

It’s easy to make a case for the first point: ever-climbing rates; the slashing of capital spending and abandonment of election promises in the face of financial crisis; and a looming failure to meet the most basic of services – clean drinking water.

On the second, the war on cars – not a luxury but an essential for most low-income families – represents an ideological point of difference.

As does the $32 million in corporate welfare being handed to the millionaire US owners of the quake-prone Reading cinema complex, while local home-owners face destitution trying to meet enormous earthquake-strengthening bills.

Perhaps the best opportunity comes with the proposed sale of the council’s assets – particularly a 34% holding in the city’s airport. In 2022 the Wellington Greens ran on a platform that included no assets sales, and specifically the airport. It has no mandate for a sell-off.

This fire sale also appears to be at odds with the Green Party’s national policy position, and the stance it took in the 2013 referendum on asset sales.

The strongest arguments available to Labour are that the public hasn’t asked for the sale, the airport makes a good return, and that there is value in council and government having a stake in a strategic asset. It’s also likely that a local authority is likely to be a better climate change actor than any private capital that snaps up its stake.

It is possible to rebuild Labour as a political force in Wellington that can both win over the left-liberal vote in the inner city, and get the support of workers in outer suburbs.

But in order to reclaim the city, Labour is going to have to start a civil war with the Greens.