OPINION
In her cloud cuckoo land, the PM has much to answer for.
Ardern’s deception on He Puapua will haunt her in 2023. Like Prince Harry, Ardern refuses to take responsibility for her actions.
Having gained office once through (Winston’s) selection, then through deception, Jacinda Ardern proceeded to put all her government’s blood sweat and tears (and our taxes) into an agenda no one knew about, but which Nanaia Mahuta’s tax-funded family were working on behind the scenes before the 2020 election.
Two years later, having divided the country with her unpopular race-based policies, she announces she won’t be campaigning on race. With no (promised) public consultation in 2022, and laws passed to legitimise them (Three Waters and the Health restructure), she is still in denial.
She has handed National and ACT, who must campaign on this, a gift. She deceived voters in 2020 by keeping He Puapua from them and then charged full steam ahead implementing it in 2022, without our consent or proper consultation with the whole country.
National and ACT can legitimately campaign to repeal all the government’s unpopular race-based policies; something which people are crying out for as they feel misled and disappointed by her deception during the 2020 election.
This is confirmed by Winston Peters, then coalition partner, who says it was intentionally hidden from his party.
Ardern can take a bow for headlines like Census workers will carry panic alarms due to anti government backlash. This seems like rather an extreme measure given that the government has not provided dairy workers, jewellers or liquor store owners, who are living in fear, with one. In their situation there is actual evidence almost daily on the news of attacks (some multiple times) by random thugs, barely out of nappies, looking for booze, cigarettes and bright shiny things for their paymasters, the gangs. Never before did National’s proposed Youth Offenders Camp sound like such a good idea.
A panic button for thousands of census workers is a massive overreach costing God knows how much, and reflects the government’s anxiety over its and its leader’s plummeting approval levels.
It is an emotional decision, not one based on a clinical assessment of the situation. It is a passive-aggressive response as though Ardern’s loss of popularity is all our fault and we, the nasty citizens are all out to get her and the census workers.
No doubt a January business survey showing business confidence at its lowest in fifty years will also be someone else’s fault and will have nothing to do with Robertson and Ardern’s radical decision-making and billion-dollar random spending sprees in all the wrong places.
Does this paranoid government really believe that fellow New Zealanders going door to door giving out census forms will be attacked because of the public’s hatred for the government? It is rather a long bow to draw, but paranoia can do that. Personally, I am insulted.
This is a government under attack, in denial and protected by government-funded media supporting their narrative, with no proper analysis of why New Zealanders have turned on them.
Fellow New Zealanders carrying out a legitimate activity, a census, something we nearly didn’t have, but for people like National’s Michael Woodhouse shaming them into doing the right thing: why should New Zealanders turn on them? On the other hand, if Ardern and Robertson were to turn up at the door, then that might be a different story.
I for one will greet the workers with a smile.
This ‘anti government backlash’ is not just from anti-mandate or so-called conspiracy theorists, as Paula Penfold is insisting. Penfold, who is also under attack from the nasty public, is paid handsomely to spin the government’s tired ‘treaty partnership’ agenda.
Can she not see the connection? Propagandists are legitimate in China, Russia and North Korea, not New Zealand. She vilified last February’s protesters, many of whom were desperate and out of work due to Covid mandates, and she is still singing from the same song sheet.
The chickens have come home to roost. Unless the government is prepared to have a good long look in the mirror, stop blaming others and take action to reverse the trends, their chances at this year’s election are slim.