If that prince of essayists Charles Dickens were alive in New Zealand today, he might well have written “A Tale of Three Estates”, as a 21st century update of his peerless Tale of Two Cities. In that novel he wrote of a French nobleman escaping from Paris on the brink of a bloodthirsty revolution to workaday London where life was carrying on in its dull conventional way, and at a time when essayists had credibility because they wrote the truth.
The three “estates” of New Zealand in 2021 would be:
(i) The Parliamentary precinct of Wellington where a small bunch of elite socialist wokes are brewing up a revolution which may not be bloodthirsty but will have copious buckets of sweat and tears;
(ii) A Covid vaccination centre in Birkenhead, Auckland, in which the dependable and co-operative Kiwi team spirit of our multicultural society is alive and working as well as it has ever done for the great mass of our people;
(iii) The once proud “Fourth Estate” which has debased itself and its former professionalism into a State-subsidised echo chamber of whatever it is that its paymistress wants to plant in the public mind.
The Parliamentary Estate:
Thankfully there is still one sane, sensible and trustworthy left wing commentator to keep our feet on the ground: Chris Trotter who writes at his Bowalley Road blogspot:
IF IT FEELS like a revolution is happening all around you, then you’re not far wrong. The New Zealand state is on the verge of unleashing profound and irreversible changes. The sort of lifestyles New Zealanders have grown accustomed to are themselves now living on borrowed time. Not that anyone in authority has thought to ask the New Zealand people if such stonking radicalism is what they want. It’s not that sort of revolution.
Ardern’s incipient revolution should have every thinking Kiwi up in arms in vigorous opposition:
(i) The 2019 He Puapua Report, the existence of which was hidden by the Labour Party until after it had disposed of its ‘handbrake’ coalition partner NZ First at the 2020 General Election, and of which the full extent remains hidden, apart from proposals such as 50/50 co-governance by Maori, and the establishment of a separate Maori Health system with power of veto over policies in the whole health sector. Just those two elements should have us all out on the streets demanding either that the whole report should be made public now and left on the table until after the 2023 General Election; or a snap election be held to ratify or reject it.
Intriguing, wasn’t it, that He Puapua was the main target of NZ First leader Winston Peters in his recent speech to his party’s AGM following his re-emergence on the national political stage. Commentator Graham Adams deals with that here.
Those wishing to read Winston’s full speech can do so here, courtesy of Newshub:
Pity he didn’t also touch on the campaign by extremists to insist that the Treaty of Waitangi is a “partnership.” I will be persisting in my efforts to persuade the National Party to pledge, on re-election, a Royal Commission to review how the Treaty relates to New Zealand of today, and to ensure that any “principles” of the Treaty relating to governance at national and local levels are enunciated by Parliament, not the courts.
For a much more detailed commentary on what all this can mean, go to the latest newsletter by Dr Muriel Newman at her NZ Centre for Political Research.
(ii) Meanwhile, in Birkenhead’s Highbury Mall, at the Waitemata DHB’s Covid Vaccination Centre, a multicultural group of ordinary Kiwis are daily demonstrating their ability and willingness to work together as a caring and efficient team to protect the safety of their fellow-Kiwis against this terrible pandemic. My wife had received by mail a letter from the DHB notifying her about an anti-Covid vax, which I accepted by email on her behalf. This drew an 8.30am appointment at Highbury, a most inconvenient time seeing as she is largely bed-ridden with a terminal cancer condition.
My efforts to contact both the 0800 phone number and the internet alternative address were so beset by gremlins that I ended up driving to the centre at the appointed time, to say that my wife wouldn’t be coming, but could I take her slot instead. “No problem”, said the lady who greeted me just outside the entrance to the large first floor room that houses the centre, “see that gentleman over there.” He became the second of the 10 people who would pass me through their system until my final discharge. Without exception, every single one of them could not have been nicer or more helpful. No fuss, no ado, just doing their job. Quite the most pleasant and efficient service from an official agency team I’ve ever had in my 92 years. Jacinda and her agenda-crazed cronies could learn from such people as these.
My summary: Highbury = high performance = 100% top marks.
(iii) Save our rights to freedom of speech and real news: Of all the items on the Ardern government’s revolutionary agenda, no two things are more insidious than their proposals to legislate against what they classify as “hate speech” and the cash kickbacks (of our tax money!) paid to players in the news-views media.
It is imperative that as many of us as possible make a submission against this hateful law, which you can do on line here by 6 August.
Details of the proposed law are here.
BFD editor Juana Atkins has shared her own submission here.
Or you can sign the ACT Party’s petition here.
As for the Ardern government’s attempts to buy support from our news media, Dr Newman in her column referenced above says:
To ensure the public don’t find out that the Treaty partnership concept is a fraud, Jacinda Ardern is now using taxpayer funding to ‘buy’ media cooperation. The recently announced $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund requires participants to not only accept the partnership lie, but to ‘actively’ promote it.
To qualify for the Fund three objectives must be met by recipients, the third of which requires them to:“Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Maori as a Te Tiriti partner.”
Using public money to require New Zealand’s so-called independent Fourth Estate to support a radical political agenda to replace New Zealand democracy with tribal rule – is a scandal.
I really do hope I’m wrong in what I say next, but I was disturbed on Monday morning to read on the Politik blog of my mate Richard Harman, a reference to an “unholy alliance” between the National Party’s leader Judith Collins and the Labour Party-aligned publication The Standard, both opposing this proposed “hate speech” law. I would have thought that any such opposition would be seen by anyone dedicated to truth in news dissemination as a very “holy” alliance – indeed the ultimate in heights of sanctity. I hope that as a reported recipient of some of that taxpayer funding, Politik’s branding of “unholy” was a careless but unintentional slip of the keyboard.
There was a time when I was proud to admit to my then occupation as a journalist. No longer! And not only because of the loss of dedication to truth and balance in reporting the news, but because so many media are now selling their very souls to an unprincipled pack of so-called politicians handing them our tax money.
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