Freedom Convoy Arrives with a Roar

The Parliamentary year started this week with a roar as the ‘Freedom Convoy’ arrived in Wellington, in fact, they were almost clogging Molesworth Street outside Parliament when I walked to work at 7:30 on Tuesday morning. Security was on high alert and most of the entrances to Parliament buildings were closed.

The ability to protest is an inalienable right that must be respected and as long as protesters respect the rights of others then they must be free to express their views.

2022 got underway in Kaikoura with Christopher Luxon’s very successful visit to Blenheim where over 350 people crammed the Marlborough Events Centre for the public meeting that followed the sold-out Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

Christopher made it clear he does not like the ‘us and them’ attitude that this Government has taken between urban and rural New Zealanders. We should acknowledge, value and be proud of the contribution our farmers make to our wellbeing, and in fact, it is farmers that have underpinned our economy through the countless days that we have had in lockdown.

He also made it very clear that we support environmental policies to reduce our emissions but not the proposal to reduce our stock numbers. All reducing our stock numbers would achieve, other than penalising farmers, is to shift production offshore to less efficient producers and increase the environmental impact, because it is well known that New Zealand farmers are some of the most efficient in the world.

Instead of taxing Utes, National would increase research and development funding to find a technological solution to reduce emissions.

We had a successful two-day Caucus meeting in Queenstown, and we mapped out how we plan to run up to the election in 2023.

The sag in confidence in the business sector is palpable and there are fewer people out and about on the streets. To date, the threat of Omicron has not reached the extreme predictions of the modellers, which incredibly the Minister Hon Chris Hipkins now claims he has always been sceptical about.

We can be forgiven for wondering why the Government would pay Siouxsie Wiles and Shaun Hendy’s modelling group Te Punaha Matatini $6 million for models the Minister appears to have little confidence in. Could it be that both these individuals have been quick to defend the Governments response at every turn?

As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is, that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”