Today will mark a shock to the system for this government and for Jacinda Ardern in particular. Today will see literally thousands of people venting their anger at the government for their proposed Ute Tax, along with many other reforms that have angered the working people of New Zealand.
The government, since their historic victory in the 2020 election, have shown a level of arrogance about their belief they have a divine right to do as they please.
Consequently, they have embraced an ideological lurch to the hard left, promulgating totalitarian new laws against free speech covered with the flimsy headscarf of compassion and a few judicious hugs. They have favoured gangs over victims and committed economic vandalism on a scale not seen since the heady days of Robert Muldoon and his iron grasp on power. Add to that their divisive policies based on He Puapua, even though they claim that it isn’t policy, but they have enacted substantial parts of the document anyway.
That Jacinda Ardern can deliver hugs and frowny concern faces at will does not make her any less a tyrant than Muldoon. She has become addicted to absolute power as a result of the unprecedented locking down of a healthy population and now cannot bring herself to open the country up again.
Her hapless ministry has also overseen a huge expansion of the housing crisis they were elected to solve. David Farrar displays a graphical scale of the issue that Jacinda Ardern promised us all that she would fix.
This chart above shows the annual increase in the median house price for every year since 2000. Note the 2021 figure is for June 20 to June 21; the rest are calendar years.
It is obvious to all that Jacinda Ardern has failed spectacularly to fix the housing crisis. In fact, it is seriously arguable that her policies have made the problem exponentially worse. Labour couldn’t build a house in a room full of Lego.
While the Howl of a Protest will show the significant scale of opposition to this government for the first time, it promises to also unleash a Winter of Discontent, far worse than anything that Helen Clark faced. Under her government, she drew the ire of truckies who ground cities around the country to a stand still with their protests. This protest today promises to be far more potent.
Labour’s new rural MPs will be looking on their former supporters with trepidation. They have believed that people voted for them in 2020 and would keep on voting for them in perpetuity because…Jacinda. That notion will be well and truly dispelled by lunchtime as the scale of the protests manifests itself. Those newly elected MPs from the rural heartland with majorities of less than 4000 are going to be quivering in fear that they will become one-term MPs. But they will be powerless to do anything, as the Labour Party’s mandarins and politburo are all ideological, student union, political pygmies who will be just like the Emperor with his new clothes and think that this is just a blip…because Jacinda’s wedding.
Todays protest will not be just about the Ute Tax, it will be about the continued nanny state interference in our everyday lives. It will be about He Puapua and the government’s fomenting of a racist and divisive society by creating a Maori elite. It will be about the abrogation of democracy by foisting Maori wards on voters. It will be about the confiscation of water assets from councils. It will be about handing money out to gangs. It will be about rising gun crime in the face of the rise of super-gangs and it will be about the abject failure of the government in housing.
It will be a howl of a protest, signalling the start of the downhill slide of this out of touch government.
A sensible prime minister would use this display of anger to roll back the more outrageous of their proposals, shelve the most heinous and reset their approach. The problem this government has is that neither they are neither sensible, nor can they recognise the electoral danger they face. I’ll pick that they will double down and go even harder and faster in their pursuit of a more divisive society. The first we will hear of it will probably be an injudicious comment from the Minister of Envy and Loathing, David Parker.
Buckle up, things are about to get rocky. Let the fun begin.
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