You make some good points, my comment was originally 3x longer at first but I cut it down in the interest of not rehashing 185 years of history

Hilarious that I, in NZ, can’t see this!

Re NZ politics - Yes and no.

The currect situation is due to some very specific circumstances thst emerged in the chaos of the last 10 years.

• The centre left Labour Party & PM were hugely popular during covid & won an unheard of majority (normally our electoral system requires a coalition). A swing back to the centre-right was inevitable.

• The centre right National party, usually our most popular party, had their leadership retire & endured years of in-fighting that made them unelectable

• Because of this, they’ve bled a lot of voters to the “libertarian” & “centrist” parties (ACT & NZ First)

• Also because of this, the current National Party leader is rather inexperienced & has given up some things in the coalition agreements that are more extreme than the public likes leading to record breaking protests.

• The “centrist” party leader (Winston Peters) is a whole thing that I can’t neatly summarize, but imagine a political party designed to cater exclusively to the oldest & dumbest 5% of voters run by that Monorail guy from The Simpsons

In summary, less a slide right & more a correction back to status quo + a few unpopular chaos agents

Nau mai ki Aotearoa e hoa. (Welcome to New Zealand, friend)