You can guarantee you won’t read that headline in the MSM.
The script of her speech to the NZ Labour Party Conference (as posted on the Labour Party web site), has her saying “while I am loathed” – as she then goes on to talk about Campbell Barry becoming NZ’s youngest ever mayor after being elected in Hutt City.
Unlike the MSM which would indeed publish such a headline to support their own agenda and make no apology for doing so, I will concede that I’ve plucked what was probably a typing error completely out of context. But it is there in the transcript of her speech, published by her own party, so it is perfectly true. It is however totally misleading and inaccurate to use it this way and only media completely bereft of integrity would publish such troublemaking, muckraking nonsense as fact when her actual quote reads: “While I’m loathed to risk singling anyone out”. It is clearly a typo.
But this is an example of how easy it is for media (and anybody else who may choose to), to misrepresent facts by omission or by excluding context, a matter that we would all do well to be vigilant about because it happens daily and often on matters of far more significance than whether a politician may or may not admit that they are loathed.
A few interesting quotes from her speech:
In New Zealand, we believe governments can create change. But in Labour, we believe they can create change for the better. When we see a problem, we fix it. When we (sic) something is broken, we rebuild it. Because that is what Labour Governments have always done. I probably don’t need to tell you though, that right now, there is a lot to fix.”
Well, at least she didn’t go for the old nine years of neglect line again but help me out if you can think of anything they’ve actually fixed or even look like fixing.
In the 2017 election we campaigned on a platform of turning around the erosion of our infrastructure, our health, education and housing crises – the most basic foundational principles of a good life.
State houses had been sold off, house prices were rocketing and home ownership was the lowest it had been in decades. Families were sleeping in cars and garages. Our rivers were unsafe to swim in.
Thousands of children were living in severe poverty and health was facing massive infrastructure challenges with sewage leaking into the walls at Middlemore hospital.
I seem to recall that the Middlemore sewage thing turned out to be a slight exaggeration but not to worry, she is leading our most transparent government ever and she did say in the election campaign that she would never lie, so it must be true. Again, if you can think of any fixes to any of the above please feel free to point them out. Talk is cheap.
And so, we embarked on a massive seven-week campaign with a relentlessly positive and optimistic message of what New Zealand could be, and we won.
I added that last sentence in case anyone missed the part of 2017 when we won
That doesn’t sound right. Let me think a minute. Didn’t Labour record a significantly lower vote than National and wasn’t it Winston Peters, with an even lower vote, who appointed Labour through one of the idiotic idiosyncrasies of the MMP system? That’s not “we won” by my reckoning but perhaps I don’t understand these things too well.
There have been other lessons too through gun reform and the Christchurch Call to Action – they were born out of a sense of responsibility, urgency, but also consensus.
They showed us what we can achieve by working together. By harnessing what unites us.
By providing voting support for the zero-emissions legislation and the gun law reforms, National has made it possible for the Prime Minister to quite legitimately make such claims of “consensus” which also imply that there is a high level of unified support for this government, its policies and its direction. We know the veracity of that, don’t we?
The PM’s speech was predictably nothing much more than a rallying call for the party faithful for an election next year and ended with a final rallying call
We need your heart, youR motivation, your values. We need your grit, and we need your determination. Because with you, we can keep making a difference.
We can keep rebuilding New Zealand. We can win in 2020.
So bring it on, and let’s keep doing this.
Convinced?