Donald Digby
The 2020 election was the most important election in my life so far. I am an expat with friends living in China and was hearing what was going on there: mass forced vaccinations, vaccine passports supported by facial recognition, incarcerating citizens based on their health status, and red, yellow and green passes (traffic light system) on the mandatory government app. The whole nine yards, and it made me deeply concerned that, unable to keep the virus out, Ardern would try to implement something similar in New Zealand.
So who to vote for? I last voted National but was very uncomfortable with Judith’s statements on the correct Covid approach, mainly because she was in lock step with Ardern. Labour and Greens were definitely off the menu although I have voted for them in the (distant) past, NZ First was in the doghouse and, with National skating on thin ice, I googled ACT. I got this hit, ACT New Zealand – For Freedom. A good start and when I clicked to their “principles” page, the main header stated, “An open and benevolent society in which individual New Zealanders are free to achieve their full potential.”
Great stuff and further reading provided more good stuff,
“That it is inherent in the nature of human beings as individuals that they are the owners of their own lives and must be free to act according to their own judgments so long as they accept and respect the like freedom of others”
Well, that was that and, for the first time, I voted ACT.
At the end of the day, how could a Party stating the above principles support mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports and the government control that comes with them?
When I read ACT’s recently released road map out of the pandemic, which sounded A LOT like what my friends in China were experiencing, I started to worry.
“Door to door initiatives for vaccination and testing”, “offer incentives for using the app to increase the effectiveness of digital contact tracing”, “daily and transparent reporting to alert people that testing may be required” and “offer increasing financial “incentives” to organizations that succeed in getting people vaccinated”.
Uh-oh, I thought, that does not sound like individuals being owners of their own lives and it definitely does not sound like an open and benevolent society. I was getting worried.
Then on Friday an article titled “Covid 19 Delta outbreak: Act’s David Seymour says employers should be able to require vaccination of workers without being sued” sent a chill down my spine. Contained in the article was this:
“Seymour also wanted a traffic light system for businesses so they can easily know the level of health and safety threat. For example, someone working with elderly in a rest home would be red, someone working from home in a remote call center would be green. A red light would apply to large-scale events or work situations that included indoor gatherings. Businesses could impose mandatory vaccine certification for employees and customers, including requiring them to provide certification.
Essential services, such as the provision of food or other necessities, would still need to be able to be accessed by persons who do not have a vaccine, for example via click and collect at a supermarket.”
NZ Herald
So ACT, the so-called party of freedom, will adopt the same policies as Communist China. Oh, and did you notice the change of wording? ACT’s road map out of Covid contained “initiatives and incentives” but in Friday’s article those words have been replaced with “impose”.
So, well played David, well played. Fool me once but you won’t fool me twice. Maybe you should consider updating your website as well because at the moment, it’s fake news.
*I will be incarcerated by the government for 2 weeks (aka MIQ) later this year to come home for Christmas. I am one of the “lucky” ones.