Category: Social Issues
None of these measures promised by the Coalition Government changes the Treaty itself. Those making such claims are deliberately scaremongering and misleading the public. They don’t want New Zealanders to have a debate about where the current Treaty arrangements are taking the country. Nor do they want public scrutiny of the vast array of race-based privileges that have already been established.
The Government will honour the Treaty. But unlike the Labour government, we will honour it without moving away from equal voting rights, without creating complex co-governance bodies and bureaucracies in Wellington to decide how central services should be delivered in the regions, and we will honour it while upholding the equality of all New Zealanders before the law.
We have now had a glimpse of where we have been heading, we know what co-governance looks like and we know where it will take us if the agenda that under-pins it is not brought to an end.
The problem we face is that few political leaders have the vision or courage to introduce transformational reforms that will genuinely empower New Zealanders to build a brighter future for themselves and their families.
The Ardern government, like the Key and Clark governments before them, tried to tax the nation to prosperity. The principal outcome being to cut productivity growth in the same way it has in the past.
Our finally completed election results need to be viewed on several levels. On the surface, the change of government was caused because Jacinda Ardern’s and Chris Hipkins’ Labour ministries were weak in personnel and unable to extract even respectable performance from the current feeble bureaucracy when dealing with bread and butter issues.
Predominantly journalists need to go back to their role as neutral observers and reporters of the news. And with regards to contentious issues, they need to return to providing a balance of perspectives so their audiences have reliable information on which to make up their own mind.
Here we get close to the core of the problem. The media have effectively set themselves above the communities they purport to serve. They are interested only in people who agree with them; the rest can be dismissed as deplorables, to use Hillary Clinton’s infamous term.
No other government in New Zealand’s history has treated voters with the level of arrogance and contempt shown by the Jacinda Ardern–Chris Hipkins 2020 Labour Government. It will take a herculean effort from a new government to repair the damage and heal the divisions.
Co-governance is a euphemism for totalitarian tribal rule. The iwi elite will call the shots and they will be accountable to no-one. They will not be able to be challenged, nor sacked. They represent the future if Labour is re-elected.