How MMP Let Us All Down

After the excesses of subsequent governments from Muldoon’s to the Lange/Douglas years and then Jim Bolger’s government, New Zealanders embraced MMP, the system designed to ensure totalitarianism could never again rise in Germany.

Kiwis were sick of governments winning majorities and then becoming petty dictators for the next three years. MMP was supposed to bring all of that to end and welcome in a new era of collaboration and cooperation with minor parties.

It all sounds so ‘motherhood and apple pie’, that is until the unthinkable happened, and a majority government was returned in 2020.

The problems we are experiencing today were supposed to be a thing of the past. Where we have one party dominating all others and ramming legislation through the house at a rapid pace with almost no consultation with the voters.

Jim Bolger had to work with the mercurial Winston Peters. Helen Clark always had to have support parties, from the ragtag Alliance to the hard left Greens, with occasional Maori support. John Key was forced to deal variously with political gadfly Peter Dunne, the ACT Party and the Maori Party. Jacinda Ardern, in her first term, had to work with Winston Peters and the Greens. What we ended up with was middle of the road politics that appealed to a majority of voters, without the extremes we had experienced under Muldoon, then Lange and the early years of Jim Bolger’s government before we moved to MMP in 1996.

Winston Peters has often acted as the proverbial handbrake, most notably stopping vital RMA reforms and the excesses of the Ardern regime.

The political parties, that used to represent the voters, now started to morph into parties with MPs that represented the party machine. They removed themselves from the voters and the party became all powerful. Under MMP a deadshit MP could remain in parliament if they were a loyal soldier to the cause of the party.

That all ended when Ardern was handed a parliamentary majority and tacked on the lunatics of the Green Party to give her a huge majority of hard left and harder left politicians.

National, far diminished after ankle tapping themselves firstly with the deeply unpopular Bill English, then the even more unpopular Simon Bridges and finally with the weak and inept Todd Muller, capitulated to Ardern in the 2020 election. They were the architects of their own demise, after building a cult around John Key, who promptly resigned when the going got tough. He left no real succession plan and a talent pool that on the surface looked fine, but underneath was as shallow as a bird bath.

Ardern then reigned supreme, and now we have the very thing that no other country in the world, that uses MMP, has ever had, a majority government.

Ardern immediately set about lurching New Zealand to the far left and in the midst of a pandemic used the crisis to strip away Kiwi’s rights and freedoms. Thus far she has been disinclined to even talk about when those freedoms might be returned.

Sadly, the fourth estate, (attributed by Thomas Carlyle  to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain), abdicated their responsibilities and power after taking 55 million pieces of silver. Instead of being the bulwark against the powerful elites, they used their own power to cheer on Ardern as she stripped away the rights of Kiwis.

Their unfaithful actions to their legacy pitted the media and Ardern’s regime against the citizens of the country. Stuff were perhaps the worst news outlet, followed closely behind by Newshub, in pushing the government’s agenda, silencing critics and demonising contrarians. Often for the ‘crime’ of merely having an opinion.

The news outlets became propagandists and shills, often adopting government policy as virtue signalling campaigns to show their allegiance to the now all powerful regime, that MMP was designed to ensure never happened.

What then are a people to do, when their own government, and the media who were supposed to speak truth to power were now singing from the same song sheet, and actively stomping over all our rights and freedoms?

We have now done the only thing we could do, we are fighting back against not only the regime, but also every single political party in the parliament, who are now so in lock step with the regime so as to be indistinguishable from them.

The people are revolting, and oh boy the elites in power don’t like it. Not the politicians, not the media, not the civil service, not the Police.

They are all quivering in fear that the people, that they’ve held in such poor regard for decades are saying ‘enough’. They shiver at the implications of a disparate group of people who have decided that camping on parliament’s lawn and forcing the politicians to listen is the only way to get action. They are afraid because what is happening is out of their control. And control is their crack cocaine. Like a junkie seeking the crack pipe or the needle, these little dictators love to exert power.

That power was exerted powerfully nine days ago, Police were brought in to crack skulls. But the protestors brought new tactics to the fore and ever since they have confounded those in power.

The elites ignored them at first. Then they smeared them, then they attacked them and each and every time the masses withstood their attempts to move them on.

The protestors at Freedom Village have only one demand…end the mandates immediately. The elites say the message is confusing, the protestors say it is not. The elite demand to know who the leaders are and the protestors say nothing. The elites make demands and the protestors say no thanks. The Police, the Defence Minister and other minister threatened them with more violence and the protestors yawned.

‘What are your demands?’ You know our demands.

‘Who are your leaders?’ Silence. Why would they reveal themselves so the elites can threaten them and attack them?

‘Do this or else?’ No.

‘What are your demands?’ You know our demands, end the mandates.

And so the circus continues, with elites now more confused than ever before.

What is now becoming more and more apparent is that the protestors are winning. The Police have realised that. That’s why they’ve moved away from the hardened stance of of the political elite and moved to a more collaborative approach with the protestors.

These people will not be moved until the mandates are gone. Labour are on the canvas. If they want to get up and take a bit more of a hiding it’s up to them. If I were them I’d be putting out a statement saying “we have reviewed the latest Omicron data and have decided to end the mandates and passports” and “no this has nothing to do with the protests”. But they won’t do that, they need some more pain. Each day that goes by the pain and the pressure builds. Pretty soon that pain and pressure will make the elites crack, but they won’t have the Police to help them anymore.

All the political parties in Parliament are being corralled by the bully who is currently the Speaker into acting in lock step against the protestors. National was posting all over social media on Wednesday that they were going to move a motion against the Speaker, but by Thursday had raised the white flag and bent the knee instead. By Friday there was talk of a cross party statement showing that National had fallen for Labour’s trap and helped shift the blame from the Government to all parties.

Christopher Luxon proved yet again that National no longer stands for that which the party was founded. He has essentially placed his party in merger talks with Labour and are now the National Labour party in all but name. His leadership is the leadership of a coward.

All parties in parliament are now boxed in and have entrenched positions as the protest grows into the Freedom Village. Their day is done. The protestors have weighed them, measured them and found them all wanting. A new dawn in politics is approaching. The elites are going to go down.

Media are cutting their own throats and have shown they are not the ones speaking truth to power, they are part of the power. The political parties are collapsing in on themselves. I believe that we are going to see more minor parties emerge, and a government where the prime minister is no longer from the largest party.

MMP failed us, the system is broken, and the only people who are truly building something special are the ones currently camped before the parliament, thumbing their noses at the elites and their oppressors.

They hold all the power right now, the whole edifice is crumbling as more and more people realise that the only way to get rights is to take them back from those that took them.

Ardern won’t relinquish her power, she loves it like a junkie loves crack. It has never been about health, it has only ever been about power. Ardern will not be remembered fondly and neither will her government. But she can’t put the poo back in goose, and so her goose is cooked.

If all that makes the elites uncomfortable, then good, that is the intent. Either get onboard or get run down, because we will not be moved. We have the power and they really don’t like it.

End the mandates now or go down with the ship. Those are the only choices this government now has. There will be no negotiation, end the mandates.

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