OPINION
Lyn F
A long-standing Australian client, a man in his mid-70s and of British origin, sent me a Crikey article published in Australia this week. As I read it, I became increasingly angry. I checked out the author and then understood her aim with this piece of propaganda. Not wanting my client to be disillusioned as to how things really are here in New Zealand and expecting that the Australian mainstream media acts similarly to ours, this was my response to his email:
Our media here (and that writer is a Kiwi) is incredibly biased and ‘progressive left’. They were bribed by the last Labour Government with $55 million-plus to do the government’s bidding, including promoting the Maori language on both TV and in written media. This means, for example, that the weather on TV is unintelligible to many Kiwis (including Maori, because there are a lot of made-up words for things introduced that the Maori never had, like pen, paper, computers, phones, and so older Maori speakers don’t understand this bastardised language either). And for a country that has a large tourism industry, the Maori language is useless. It certainly has its place and it’s a lovely language, but when you can’t find a library or a parking building because it’s named in Maori, this switch becomes divisive and a nuisance. The mainstream media are dying in New Zealand, and these are two of the main reasons – the overuse of Maori and the propaganda that the government-bought media has assailed us with.
The child poverty issue has become much worse over the past six years. More than 50 per cent of kids aren’t attending school regularly, and literacy and numeracy skills are in decline. We’ve gone from being at the top in the worldwide education statistics to way down the list. The Labour Government decided to put low-income people needing housing into motel units. One tourism city became over-run with these people and property values dropped as crime increased and people gave the town a wide berth. The only winners are the motel owners – the government has been paying over one million a DAY to house these people.
Ram raids have risen sharply over the past year or so and many of these are young children, as young as eight and rarely past teenage-hood. Some of these are involved with gangs but others do it for a lark: steal a car then ram a shop front to steal smokes, vapes, alcohol or jewellery. They’re useful to the gangs because, under the Labour Government, the police could do nothing with the kids – and the kids know that too. I used to wonder why parents were allowing their kids out in the middle of the night, then I realised that a lot of these kids are in state care.
We’ve had another death of a baby, caused by blunt-force trauma. Three people were in the house at the time, all known to police and state care. The baby’s extended family had begged for the state to intervene before something happened. They didn’t and now this beautiful little boy is dead. As has happened before, all three people have refused to open their mouths so the police are stymied at this stage. These deaths are predominantly in Maori families, and Labour decided interventions should be by Maori for Maori, so more of these little at-risk kiddies are being left with the families that are abusing them. So no, the situation for children can only get better. Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins failed them terribly.
On the prisons, yes, they wanted to get the number of inmates down. Maori were over-represented in our prisons, so judges were instructed to keep them out at all costs. That’s how the numbers dropped, but our society is much worse off for it. We now have many violent offenders in the community on ankle bracelets and they continue to offend. The recent killing of two workers in central Auckland is a case in point. The young man had been fired the day before, obtained a gun and went back and walked through the complex firing the pump-action shotgun. One responding policeman/armed offender officer was shot. The gunman died at the scene – I’ve heard conflicting information on whether he died by his own hand or by police. He was on an ankle bracelet with permission to go to work and back each day. He was on the ankle bracelet for attacking his then-girlfriend and throttling her so severely that a bone in her neck was broken. It was not his first violent offence. He should have been in jail: then these deaths wouldn’t have occurred. That’s only one case: there are many.
So yes, there are fewer criminals in jail now, but not because crime has dropped. It’s because judges are writing off their crimes down to a point (under two years’ jail) that they can sentence them to an anklet in the community. The police have also had their hands tied with gangs, to the point that gangs can take over whole towns for a tangi (funeral). One such instance recently was a tangi for a senior gang member. The gang members rolled in and took over the streets. Schools shut down for days until the gang members left again. Labour deliberately coddled the gangs for votes – they patted their backs and the gang leaders instructed their members to vote Labour. Gang numbers are running at an all-time high.
When Labour got in in 2017 they hatched a plan to give all our water infrastructure to the Maori elite: the water infrastructure that is owned by council ratepayers. Their excuse was that the water system was so dilapidated that it would cost too much to update. That’s simply not true. Our water quality and infrastructure here under the Timaru council is top-notch. I expect that is the case over the whole South Island. Wellington, where parliament sits, is another matter. Its water system IS terrible because council after council have ignored it and still do. From 2017–2020, Labour was in coalition with New Zealand First (Winston Peters). Labour/Greens knew damn well that if Winston knew about this plan with the water then he’d stop it in its tracks. So, they hid it from him. That has been proven and admitted.
In 2020 Labour got enough votes to govern alone, without a coalition. This was due to some buying into Ardern’s ‘kindness’ and a belief that she ‘saved’ us from Covid (of course she didn’t – it’s not hard to protect an isolated country like New Zealand and her lockdowns only slowed the speed of the spread). Once able to govern alone, Labour set in play their idea of handing all the water to the Maori elite. Councils were to only receive a token payment. You can bet your bottom dollar, too, that the Maori elite would begin to charge through the nose for every drop of water used. The whole country became very divided over this. The legislation was rushed through ‘under urgency’, allowing no time for debate in the government. Contracts were assigned to Maori entities to get cracking. There was no referendum – no one was allowed a say. It was highly divisive. Now that National has got in and says they will throw this out, the same Maori elite are saying you can’t do this: there’ll be war. They’re trying to incite an uprising, only no one is listening – least of all the average Maori on the street. They’re sick and tired of all of it too.
Another issue was that, right in the midst of Covid with doctors and nurses crying out for extra help due to being overworked and huge waiting lists, Labour decided to spend millions (billions?) on revamping the health system and creating a Maori Health Authority. Surgeons and doctors were told that Maori, above all else (Pakeha, Asian, Indian, Australian, anyone), were to be moved to the top of each queue. Many doctors were uncomfortable with this. Ethnicity and race should have nothing to do with it: need must be the sole factor in triaging patients. But again, Labour didn’t care. My own son needs important surgery and can’t get in – he’s not even on a wait list yet. Many Kiwis are seeking private care because the public wait times are too long.
Bureaucracy has also increased by 33 per cent. So much wasted money on ridiculous things that we simply cannot afford. I’ve only highlighted a few issues – there are many more. Labour has stuffed up so much, thrown so much money around and achieved very, very little in six years.
So, we, the country, have had enough. We voted and we delivered a resounding ‘no’ to Labour, Greens and the Maori Party.
As for a three-headed government, it’s what WE wanted. We wanted change, but more than just a swing to the right, because Christopher Luxon is happy with men in women’s spaces; Luxon doesn’t think there is an issue with Maori names for everything; and Luxon was happy with the privatisation of our water infrastructure. Luxon has only been in politics a very short time and thinks he can run the government like a business. He doesn’t have the experience and, with only him and National in power, little would change.
ACT/David Seymour and NZ First/Winston Peters have similar policies: they want to go back to the way we were. They want to get rid of the bureaucracy, they want to make our streets safer, they want our children to be safe and well-educated and they want a productive economy. I have never voted right in my life. I don’t trust National because they don’t care about the worker, only lining their mates’ pockets. I could never vote ACT because they are too libertarian for me and there have to be some grey areas. ACT, though, will pull Luxon from dead centre/centre-left to the right, a little, and definitely well away from the radical left we’ve just lived through.
I was so pleased when Winston stood again. I have voted for him before and did this time, too. He is a mature gentleman who came from a poor family and was a labourer before putting himself through law school and from there launched into politics, where he has been for decades. He is Maori, so is Seymour, but neither believes in favouritism. They know Maori can stand on their own two feet – as Winston has done – and neither buy into all the Maori ‘victimhood’ status.
Winston has not been part of the government since 2020 and has had nothing to do with any of the nonsense we’ve been subjected to. We couldn’t risk National getting in alone or with just a coalition of National and ACT (because then Luxon would hold the reins and ACT would have to kowtow to him). We wanted a bloody good shake up and for the government to listen to the people. Luxon cannot possibly govern alone, so with both ACT and Winston in with him, he has to bow to them. It’s worked out perfectly and I couldn’t be happier. Many former left voters voted the same as I this time, for this result. One political commentator-writer who is your age has always, always, been left. I spoke to him recently and he too is over the moon at this result. Like many others, he has been aghast at what this past Labour Government has done to our country. He doesn’t think he can ever vote left again.
That leftie whinger journo in Crikey does not live here now but in Australia. Her circle of friends undoubtedly are similar-minded. Most will vote Labour and now they’re doing their best to undermine confidence in the new government. It’s not working, because we can see them for who they are. These guys are so, so, removed from the people, the average citizens of New Zealand, that one of our leading media ‘personalities’ was absolutely shocked at the election result and stupidly said, ‘Well, who could have seen that coming?!’ Silly girl. These media people have no idea how upset and angry we, the people, are over what their buddies the Labour Party have done to our beautiful country and people.
Prior to the election, Luxon put up a social media post saying his preference was to work only with ACT. He wouldn’t categorically rule out Winston/New Zealand First, though. I responded to his post with: ‘You will work with who we, the people, say you will work with. We live in a democracy and we call the shots, not you.’ And that’s exactly what we did.
If Luxon hadn’t agreed to Winston and Seymour’s demands and we’d had a second election, I expect we would have returned an evenly split majority for New Zealand First and ACT. National would have been out. We want change, we voted for it and we are damned determined to get it.
Kiwis are a laid-back, tolerant bunch, but if you push us too far, we will not stand for it. Labour pushed us too far. And if National doesn’t undo as much of the damage as possible, they’ll be out next election and I expect the coalition will be ACT and Winston (long may he live – but he’s got very good people underneath him that will and can stand in his place).
So, that’s my response to that media lackey in Crikey. She does not speak for the majority of Kiwis. The fact that she describes herself as the Kiwi that informs Australians about New Zealand is a worry. If she wants to know how the average Kiwi feels about this government, she should come over and interview the common citizen on the ground. There are so, so many people absolutely delighted with this outcome. Some were in tears with relief.
In terms of buoyancy, in the last three years, the only day that compares to this election result was the day Jacinda Ardern resigned: the relief was palpable. In Auckland, the business areas erupted with cheers and there was reportedly no room in any of the cafes, pubs and eateries. People abandoned work and celebrated. She was so incredibly hated for what she did to us; the only hope for the Labour Party was to get rid of her if they wanted a shot at the election. Sadly for them, the only person capable of running the party after Ardern’s resignation was Hipkins and that was never going to work because he was equally culpable for the damage done and was clearly going to follow in her footsteps.
There you go. I’ve written a book.