The Guilty Leftist

No more a leftist than the guilty feminist is a feminist.

“I don’t believe in pay equity. There - I’ve said it.”

This admission in a text from a friend this week made me laugh. This is what passes for scandalous these days for those of us formerly of the left. Having been catapulted out from our tribe courtesy their gender ideological erasure of women, we don’t know what to think anymore. Gone is the set menu of acceptable views we once unthinkingly shared, gone is the certainty that our side were the kind folk and gone are the kind folk tbh. Not so kind when you don’t agree with them.

But back to pay equity - we were both having second thoughts about a practice and principle we once thought was inviolate. We loved it when Kristine Bartlett achieved a higher wage rate for poorly paid care workers but it seemed to us that to employ this technique to numerous other jobs was a case of mission creep. Not all the jobs up for consideration were what I would call poorly paid - nurses, librarians, psychologists.

We were also both tired of the leftist trope of the woman as downtrodden. In fact women are doing as well or better than men on many metrics - education, professional representation, political representation. Men could claim to be over-represented in numerous negative statistics such as suicide, homelessness, lifespan and workplace deaths.

More importantly for this issue, there are many low paid jobs largely done by men and we see no attempt to raise their wages via the pay equity mechanism - warehouse workers, industrial cleaners, construction labourers and meat processing workers for instance.

Would we support it if the same mechanism raised their wages? Possibly. We both support the principle of sustainable wages and the right of workers to lobby for increases.

Pay equity is the same pay for different work which has the same or similar level of skill, responsibility, and effort. The new pay equity scheme wasn’t extinguishing the practice my friend had now decided was foolish. The government was just attempting to reign in changes made by Labour that opened the floodgates to claims and comparators they considered unfair. Treasury estimates of a $17b price tag over four years for the previously agreed rates gave us Guilty Leftists pause for thought.

As did the timing of the proposed changes when it was reported that politicians would receive an automatic pay rise come July 1 of 2-2.4 per cent. Disappointing. On a comparative global scale, New Zealand politicians are well remunerated.

My Guilty Leftist mate and I came to the conclusion that the number of public servants is excessive, many of whom are overpaid compared with the private sector. Workers in the public sector earn on average $10 an hour more than workers in the private sector. And it is the private sector that generates the wealth. The public sector just spends it.

As we mulled over our rudimentary, illicit views, we swore we’d never air them in public for fear of being seen as anti-women. Given the public outcry and protests around the country, it seemed like the left had the wind in their sails and would be flying this kite all the way to the election. That is, until the left showed us who they really were.

First, the propaganda arm of the left, mainstream media, published a column ostensibly defending pay equity but in truth dumping on women they disagreed with in the worst possible way. As well as phrases like ‘girl boss’ and ‘girl math’ the C-word was levelled at female cabinet ministers in the Coalition government. I doubt I’ve ever read anything as deeply offensive and sexist in msm. The Overton window of acceptability had widened so far now it appeared that all reason and judgement had been tossed out. Yet, despite the egregious sexism of the text, the rest of the media ignored the column as did politicians on the left.

Suddenly the truth was blindingly obvious. The left doesn't care about women. They didn’t when they voted in the Prostitution Reform Bill, Self-Sex ID and the Conversion Therapy Bill, while insisting men could be women.

Nothing has changed. They still don’t give a damn. For all their moral posturing, when it comes to the left, women have only ever been a tool in their armoury to beat the right with when the occasion arises. No group is better at whipping up emotional fervour. Standing up for women on principle not so much.

Their hypocrisy was on display when the former Minister for Women (the ministry that includes men) Jan Tinetti laid into the coalition government using the text of the offending article. Obviously only women with the correct views suffer sexism. Fortunately the ACT MP Brooke van Velden who spearheaded the changes to the pay equity scheme was more than capable of defending herself and other women. She even used the C-word for the first time in parliament, simply echoing the writer. Depending on your views this is either an achievement or a new nadir.

Will this sideshow damage the pay equity campaign? Has the left lost the moral high ground completely or is this a temporary set-back? Hard to say, but at least it’s emboldened me to raise doubts shared by myself and the other Guilty Leftist.

Actually I wish I’d called my substack The Guilty Leftist since I have a feeling I’ll be rethinking my position on a number of issues as time goes by. The title of this article is of course a riff on the Guilty Feminist, a lightweight comedian I can honestly say I’ve never rated. After her disastrous showing on Triggernometry recently, I’m guessing her cred may have well and truly tanked. As might mine having written this.

The above drawing is of me wearing her glasses and done by AI.