Category: Democracy
What emerges over the next few days promises to be a master-class in the art of dismissing, diminishing and disparaging an individual who has had the temerity to breach the iron law of omerta which governs the practice of party politics.
But there’s a much deeper reason for National’s decline in the polls. The honeymoon of hope and expectation around the new leader has subsided. Some will be disappointed with Christopher Luxon’s impassive stance on a number of issues - but particularly Labour’s attack on democracy through co-governance.
Regrettably, in today’s New Zealand there are people who, putting racism under new management and rejecting equality before the law, advance race-based co-governance as a serious proposition for New Zealand’s future. Now, public health, drinking water, sewage, storm water, local body governance, aspects of resource management and so on. Tomorrow, who knows?
Fortunately, people like Richard Prebble, Jason Smith, Graham Adams, and Elizabeth Rata are calling out the transformational change Jacinda Ardern promised for what it is – a coup against democracy.
Tribalism and democracy are incompatible. We can’t have both. If we wish to keep New Zealand as a liberal democratic nation then, as we derive our citizen rights from the nation-state, so we have a duty to ensure that the nation-state which awards those rights, remains democratic and able to do so.
The climate crisis is a political crisis – not one rooted in the real world. It has arisen because successive governments have adopted the radical socialist agenda of the UN to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide as a means of regulating their economies.
Given Jacinda Ardern's dismal track record of policy failure, with the housing merger, the polytech merger and the health board merger all turning into disasters, how can New Zealanders possibly have faith that Labour’s plan to centralise council-run water services into mega bureaucracies controlled by iwi is going to work out well?
The most likely long-term outcome of the 3Waters reform is that the assumed cost and capital efficiencies will not materialise, due to a cumbersome governance structure subservient to cultural interests. The water reform is a high-risk proposition, with much higher risks that that faced by the 67 local authorities individually.
Both Boris Johnson and Jacinda Ardern have suffered a loss of public trust and confidence in their leadership. For the former British Prime Minister, it was largely the result of a series of missteps, while for our ideologically-driven Prime Minister, government incompetence is largely to blame.
If the Tories are to pull themselves out of the electoral mire, it is imperative that they now elect a leader who will dump Net Zero; take the firmest possible line against all those seeking to spread poisonous and intolerant division and intimidation; and use Britain’s independence from the EU to become again a nimble, innovative and creative trading nation.
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