In early 2018, a New Zealand nurse and union member Elizabeth Alice wrote an open Facebook post that went viral. “Here’s the thing,” Alice wrote. Nurses were fighting for pay, staffing levels, and “the future of our public health system.” “Our communities deserve investment in public health,” Alice continued. ‘If we don’t fight for it now then it will be gone, and we will have a situation like the USA where the rich get premium care and the poor die on the streets from curable diseases.”

Ending the open letter, Alice wrote, “Let’s actually do this,” a reference to the Labour Party’s election slogan: “Let’s do this.”

A coalition government led by the Labour Party unexpectedly claimed electoral victory in 2017 after what seemed like an eternity of the right-wing National Party, in power since 2009. Labour campaigned on a platform of restoring workers’ rights, tackling child poverty, climate justice, prison reform, rebuilding the welfare state, and investing in health and education. Yet in a campaign that seemed to signal an end of austerity, the Labour Party also signed up to a self-imposed “budget responsibility agreement.” As a result, after two years in office, the transformational change that many expected hasn’t arrived.