OPINION
Peter Allan Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week
peterallanwilliams.substack.com
The Prime Minister has a cheek, doesn’t he? He said on Monday that there was no compulsory COVID-19 vaccination. People, he said, made their own choices. Yesterday he doubled down.
Now let’s cut him the tiniest little bit of slack. What he says is technically correct, although if he had things his way it would definitely have been compulsory.
Remember he was the guy who said that “they” would go looking for the unvaccinated. Something tells me he may have even used the phrase “we will hunt you down.”
But he is really splitting hairs by invoking the use of the word “compulsory.” Yes, nobody was forced to – as in being physically taken in for jabbing. But the mandates in so many jobs meant that you couldn’t stay in work if you weren’t vaccinated.
It was despicable coercion of the highest order, so let’s call it a virtual compulsion. Hipkins really was quite vile when he made that assertion a couple of days ago because he must know that many, many people lost jobs and careers because of the mandates imposed by their employers, both public and private.
The least he could have done was apologise for what they did. But you know what – I don’t think he and they, as in the Labour Party, are sorry.
In many respects, I almost wish I’d stayed on at Mediaworks instead of resigning – it was two years ago this week – and had a showdown with management over the mandate they brought in about a week after I left.
But Hipkins’ insistence on there being no compulsion is bordering on fiction in the minds of thousands of us. The arrogance and rejection of people’s rights as displayed by Jacinda Ardern’s admission of two classes of people, and then Hipkins saying words to the effect of “we will hunt you down” make this Labour leadership the most personally despised of any political party in my lifetime.
They were at 24 per cent in the Roy Morgan poll Tuesday. I don’t think they’ve hit the bottom yet.
They deserve everything coming to them.