Who hasn’t resisted the urge to throw something at the television during the news? Half-truths and omissions that support Jacinda the Wonderful and lies to demonstrate Orange Man Bad will do that to you.

Viewers with less than a cursory interest in politics are so acclimatised to media opinion being presented as fact that they assume everything they hear is factual. Media are content to look the other way, ignoring their professional responsibility to provide the public with factual news simply because they do not like the facts. The errors and omissions by NZ media are a separate topic.

The BFD

Bad Man Orange emanated from American media, and this week Trump took Twitter to task for its dishonest attempt at placing a foot in two opposing camps. Twitter has a solid footing in the opinion camp, but the problem arose when Twitter censored Trump’s posts, thereby acting as a publisher.

Trump was justifiably annoyed when his tweeted opinions were censored under the guise of “fact checking”. An opinion does not require censoring. An opinion is open to discussion and can be agreed or disagreed with.

Twitter can’t have it both ways, so Trump introduced legislation to remove some of the protections Twitter and Facebook previously enjoyed as social media opinion platforms. Trump opened them up to the same legal challenges afforded publishers.

“US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at removing some of the legal protections given to social media platforms.

He said the firms had “unchecked power” to censure and edit the views of users.

President Trump has regularly accused platforms such as Twitter and Facebook of stifling conservative voices.

The order, which is expected to face legal challenges, comes after Twitter decided to append fact-check labels to two of his tweets this week.”

Trump accused the media of censoring right-wing opinion. We have the same problem here. Our Ardern-adoring media constantly bypass a raft of Ardern government failures in favour of international and local media opinion saying she is doing a great job. Opinion and fact about the Ardern government’s performance have been deliberately blurred by media to confuse the viewer.

If the public really understood the extent of the Ardern government incompetence it is highly likely that they would not be re-elected. But if this government is left unchecked they could go down as the most destructive in our history.  

The following facts about failed promises and poor performance is nothing short of tragic from a government which promised openness and transparency.

Aged Care

  • David Clark, the Minister of Health, made a commitment prior to the election in a speech he gave in Christchurch that the first Budget of a Labour-led Government would see the appointment of an Aged Care Commissioner.

Child Poverty

  • Promised to end child poverty which worsened with 11,000 more children in material hardship and 15,000 more children living in welfare dependent homes.
  • Seven out of nine child poverty indicators increased.

COVID-19

  • Did not go “hard or early”
  • Failed to close the borders in March as advised. Instead implemented sustained lockdown causing economic hardship which could have been avoided if the borders had been closed earlier
  • Estimated deaths from hospital postponed cancer checks and surgeries under lockdown will exceed the 22 deaths from Covid-19 which all were aged people with pre-existing conditions
  • Inflated daily COVID-19 infection numbers by including “probable cases”
  • Inflated the death count by including 96-year-old Eileen Hunter’s death whose death certificate did not state COVID because she had recovered
  • Did not re-evaluate our lockdown after it was revealed 80,000 anticipated deaths was a grossly inflated figure based on faulty overseas modelling by the Royal Institute
  • Refused 24 out of 24 requests to visit dying relatives during lockdown after telling NZ to “be kind” during the lockdown.

Economy

  • GDP dropped under the CoL. December 2019 GDP figures showed New Zealand went into a ‘GDP per person recession’ in the first half of the year, and continue to show an economy that is failing to deliver higher living standards for New Zealanders. The government is relying entirely on population growth to drive the economy.
  • Government debt skyrocketed during COVID-19 when the government sprayed around borrowed money. A newspaper reported that we are entering the “sharpest, deepest economic slump ever.”
  • New Zealand ranks fourth last in the OECD for labour productivity growth, and last for multi-factor productivity growth, according to economist Michael Reddell, based on OECD data. Health and education are gobbling up more of the budget as the population ages, with less and less to show for it
  • Bob Jones says “In one year, New Zealand has blown 30 years of hard-fought ­fiscal rectitude.“
  • Job growth more than halved from 10,000 new jobs a month under National to 4,000 a month under Labour
  • Banning oil & gas exploration caused a $30 billion loss to Taranaki and increased the price of imported fuel
  • State Services Minister Chris Hipkins promised in mid-2018 this Government would “reduce the reliance on expensive consultants and contractors, saving taxpayers many millions of dollars a year”. At that time, the total spend across all 30-plus public sectors was just over $550m for 300 plus working groups
  • Business confidence was at a ten year low before COVID-19 lockdown.
  • More industrial strikes in Labour’s first year than in the last ten years.

Education

  • Shut down Charter Schools
  • Failed to deliver 100 per cent qualified ECE teachers
  • Teacher strikes
  • Failed to reduce teacher/child ratios in early learning.

Environment

  • Failed to successfully implement its promise to plant a billion trees
  • Plastic bag ban left customers in the lurch during COVID-19 when supermarkets banned re-useable shopping bags
  • The waste from single use PPE gear has astronomically increased with tonnes of additional daily landfill and no message from the government about managing additional PPE waste from dentists, doctors, hospitals and medical centres.

Health

  • Promised to address youth suicide by providing free counselling for under 25s
  • Failed to implement a surgical mesh register
  • Failed to increase breast screening to age 74
  • Auckland Hospital is investigating four maternal deaths since March 23 under lockdown (A newspaper report)
  • DHB cost blowouts
  • Insurer warns of high risk of suicide by failed business owners.

Housing

  • Labour’s flagship housing policy, KiwiBuild, flopped
  • Cost of rental housing increased an average of $50 a week after passage of legislation that made rental properties uneconomic so landlords sold rental properties
  • State housing waiting lists increased from 6,000 to a record high of 14,500 in less than two years under Labour.

Inequality

  • Promised to address inequality, but Maori are still over-represented in poor socio-economic outcomes and account for more than 50% of the prison population, despite being only 14% of the general population.

Infrastructure

  • Cancelled “all roads of national significance” but two years later reversed that terrible decision
  • 2018 census disaster under the CoL’s watch.

Legislation

  • Promised no new taxes but implemented seven including a petrol tax
  • Promised a capital gains tax but thankfully failed to implement it
  • Failed to strengthen the OIA as promised
  • Botched legislation on gun law reform
  • Passed legislation removing freedom and giving police and authorised person(s) the right to enter private homes without a warrant.

Ministerial Competence

  • New government failed to count heads and were forced to concede more opposition members on select committees to have Mallard elected speaker unopposed
  • Phil Twyford and Megan Woods both demoted during the KiwiBuild debacle
  • Ian Lees-Galloway granted residency to convicted criminal Karel Sroubek in 2018
  • Meka Whaitiri stood down for shouting and manhandling a staff member and fired from the cabinet a month later
  • Claire Curran stripped of ministerial duties and subsequently resigned after using her computer for ministerial duties and failing to disclose meetings with Carol Hirschfeld
  • Justice Minister Andrew Little was only prevented from repealing the three strikes law by Winston Peters
  • National complained that undisciplined CoL ministers missed or were late for select committee meetings and forced the issue by walking out of an important select committee meeting on the health system and funding new cancer drugs. This sent dozens of submitters back home when a quorum was not formed within the allowable time frame, wasting time and money.
  • The Minister of Health broke his own rules three times during Covid-19 lockdown.

National Security

  • NZ is the only member of Five Eyes not taking China to task over Hong Kong security law.

Police

  • Promise of 1800 new police in three years was declared unattainable
  • Police botched the implementation of clunky new gun control laws and intimidated legitimate gun owner Dieuwe De Boer and his family
  • Guns handed in to police with very casual gun custody measures were stolen by criminals.

Ardern received global acclaim for her hug-a-Muslim-athon after Christchurch, raised New Zealand’s international profile (albeit for flimsy reasons), and provided financial assistance to employees during COVID-19. A pretty shabby offset to the long list of government fails. The ledger is heavily balanced against Ardern’s government but you won’t hear this from mainstream media.

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I am happily a New Zealander whose heritage shaped but does not define. Four generations ago my forebears left overcrowded, poverty ridden England, Ireland and Germany for better prospects here. They were...