Category: Politics
Ardern did think she was teaching the rest of the world how to cope with a pandemic. She has been brought down to Earth with a very loud bump.
With the health system already under serious pressure, it is sheer madness for Labour to consider pressing ahead with the upheaval that would be caused by major structural reform at a time when the Covid-19 elimination strategy is being abandoned.
The decision to abolish DHBs and replace them with a new centralised national bureaucracy in which decision-making will be further removed from health professionals and communities was both abrupt and drastic.
Since the election, one out of every seven people who voted for Labour have shifted their support to another party. All it takes is another one out of every seven to do the same and its game over for Labour and He Puapua.
Councils now own drinking water, wastewater and stormwater assets, directly or indirectly. That will change. Only iwi/Māori will have ownership rights. Directly in some respects, indirectly in others. Local authorities will have none.
Let’s make no mistake about the situation we face. Under the cover of the Covid crisis, the government is pushing ahead with reforms that will fundamentally change our society from an open democracy based on the equality of all, to a tribal apartheid system that allocates resources and grants rights according to a person's heritage and the colour of their skin.
A free and independent press is a critically important foundation to any democracy. Without it, governments can go unchecked and the rule of law will suffer. One only has to see the events in Hong Kong over the last two years to see the impact on a society where the influence of the press has been extinguished.
It is now clear that the Government has staked its political future on the Pfizer vaccine strategy, which requires near universal vaccination and regular booster doses.
The apparent kindness of locking down to limit Covid-19 deaths will, instead, be killing more people by making us poorer - lockdowns are one of our greatest peacetime policy failures.
The Level 4 lockdown imposed on March 25 2020 in New Zealand was the world’s most restrictive set of closure and containment policies at the time.
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