Where Is the Healthy, Open and Honest Debate?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that all of our politicians have coerced, pressured and manipulated a good portion of the general population into taking the Pfizer vaccine. Love it or hate it (the vaccine, that is), this type of behaviour would never previously have been tolerated by the public. Except, under the cover of Covid!

All of the 120 MPs who currently sit in Parliament are culpable. Every sitting political party is culpable. They’ve all had a part to play in peddling the vaccine to the masses. Be damned, the people. They all need to be given eviction notices from Parliament for crimes against humanity.

Back at the beginning of the vaccine roll-out someone said that the worst thing a country could do is rely on politicians to promote vaccinations…they are the most distrusted profession in this country…yet that’s exactly what happened.

There has been no healthy, open and honest debate in the public domain where both sides of the argument could be fairly presented. Instead only one side of the crafty narrative has been rammed down our throats by our politicians and mainstream media.

Day after day, week after week, we’ve had to endure their 1 pm self-congratulatory press conferences. No surprise a lot of Kiwis do not believe that we are being told the whole truth about COVID-19, vaccinations and more by this government.

Now, after the sheer mass of The Freedoms & Rights Coalition protestors that peacefully assembled outside Parliament steps on Tuesday the 9th of November 2021, and now that we are 5 protests in, we are seeing party after party flip-flopping and U-turning, and back-pedalling by all of these turncoats…these dishonest politicians.

Inside sources within the Beehive have reported to us that on Tuesday, in the halls of power, the politicians were duly sh*tting themselves. They were in disbelief. They had never seen any protest like this in their lifetime. The weight of how unhappy a good portion of this nation is seemed to finally register.

This is where we have always known that physically continuing to come out in numbers to protest means something. Kiwis can be easy to ignore when you stay at home, hiding behind your laptops sending emails and letters, and signing petitions. You are easy to ignore when you can’t tangibly be seen.

Congratulations to every Kiwi who has stood with The Freedoms & Rights Coalition, marched with us, supported us. Your contribution has counted! Our numbers of over 50,000 nationwide at events have mattered! Per capita, that’s a significant portion of our population on the world stage.

As a result, since the 9th of November 2021 we’ve seen:

• Labour used to act on every scare-mongering report from modellers; now due to public pressure we see them consistently going against the experts’ advice, relaxing alert levels, opening the Auckland border for the unvaccinated (if tested) from 15 December, and many other small concessions as each day passes by…still a long way to go though. There’s been an obvious change in Jacinda Ardern’s demeanour. Where only a few weeks ago she was very cocky, authoritative and arrogant, now she seems to have her tail between her legs. She doesn’t know how to deal with the change in the public’s attitude towards her, and she’s desperate enough to see that favour return, so just wait for her next lolly scrambles.

• National and Judith Collins have fervently promoted vaccinations and railed on Labour for being too slow to roll vaccines out in military fashion. They also haven’t been able to get their numbers straight when it came to vaccination targets with Collins saying the target should be 70-75%, Shane Reti saying 90-95%, then Chris Bishop saying 85-90%. On one hand, Chris Bishop is saying people who are vaccinated should have greater freedoms than those who aren’t. On the other Collins is saying she doesn’t believe there should be two classes of people with the traffic light system. Confused? So are they. Now National are calling for Freedom day on 1 December, also stating that they agreed with vaccine mandates, but not forever.

• The Maori Party are now calling for the government to abolish vaccine mandates and instead let Maori decide for themselves whether to adopt mandates in their own iwi, whanau and communities. They propose that regular testing should be used as an option. Where was this news earlier when Maori were being pressured to enforce vaccine mandates across all levels of society? Only as recently as 15 October Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was on the vax promotion bandwagon imploring people to trust their political and community leaders who would not be supporting the vaccination effort if it wasn’t beneficial. Now you’re a bit late to the party Debbie and Rawiri; everyone is already well and truly sloshed.

• The ACT party is completely two-faced. In the first instance, David Seymour was all for vaccine mandates; only three weeks ago he was questioning why the police force does not have vaccine mandates. In the next breath, he’s pushing for our babies to be vaccinated, and now he’s done an about-turn saying the vaccine mandates should be lifted. Only a fool would fall for this guy and his sneaky tactics to win what he sees as easy votes amongst the freedom and farming communities.

• Lastly the Greens…who even knows what they are up to. They probably don’t know themselves. They campaigned last year on a health system that should be organised around what’s best for people, and that public health services should be flexible and diverse to cater to different people’s needs. Their prolific promotion of vaccines seems to be contrary to everything the Greens were historically known for, especially when they once tended towards natural remedies, not vaccines.

This goes to show that not one of these political parties can be trusted. Not one of them holds any hope in protecting the freedoms and rights of New Zealanders.

Now, remember, The Freedoms & Rights Coalition is not pro-vax, neither are we anti-vax. Every step of the way we have been pro-choice when it comes to the vaccine. We have never believed that vaccine mandates have any place in New Zealand society. Neither does a traffic light system belong that alienates the unvaxxed in our communities.

We continue to scream at the top of our lungs, regardless of who is listening, that these actions violate our freedoms under the NZ Bill of Rights. We do not accept that the NZ Bill of Rights should be relegated to being as useful as toilet paper. Yet that is exactly how our politicians are treating the NZ Bill of Rights as they casually flick it aside in their decision making.

Protesting has come at a great personal sacrifice to many in The Freedoms & Rights Coalition camp, as weekly our volunteers and supporters continue to cop unfair charges from the NZ Police.

Individuals like Brian Tamaki will go down in history for the personal sacrifices they have made. However, our resilience is such, as a fledging organisation, that new people step up, and we continue to battle forward, no matter the threats.

There is too much on the line here for New Zealand as a whole, and we must protect now all and any freedoms and rights that we can before we have to kiss them goodbye for good. We’re not holding our breath though. The politicians in the Beehive will be hoping we will peter out and just go away. They will do everything possible to try to wait us out, to ignore us, they will try to penalise us, they will try to silence us, they will lie about us, they will try to control us…but we must keep forging ahead.

We have some firm new strategic steps of action in the pipeline. More on this in the coming months.

In the meantime, continue to stand with us…the battle to protect our Freedoms & Rights is far from over. We know that our peaceful actions make an impact. Let’s keep going!