Freedom, democracy and the Rule of Law are the cornerstones of a modern society.
So, let’s start 2025 with a quick stocktake on how well these foundations are being defended.
First of all, it’s important to remind ourselves that the Coalition was elected on the promise of reversing Labour’s destructive policy agenda, that was undermining all three pillars of our society.
Freedom
Under Labour, freedom was under threat as never before. Like an authoritarian dictator, the former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern used the pandemic to declare she was the ‘single source of truth’. Anyone opposing her views not only risked being cancelled but could end up with the Police knocking on their door.
In the name of empathy and compassion, powerful new Hate Speech Laws were being planned that would have criminalised anything Labour disagreed with. Misinformation and Disinformation Centres had been established to promote Labour’s “woke” agenda and suppress views that did not conform.
Social media had become a censorship minefield until Elon Musk restored freedom to Twitter. Now Donald Trump’s election as US President appears to be restoring it to Facebook – although not yet in New Zealand.
Whilst our Coalition Government has ditched the hate speech restrictions, and is now attempting to restore free speech to universities, whether they comply or remain defiant is yet to be seen.
And that’s the problem the Coalition faces. All too often their policy changes fall on deaf ears. They are battling a State Sector that is largely hostile to anything that threatens their deeply rooted commitment to the agenda put in place by the Ardern Government.
With too many Ministers not following through to ensure the changes they have introduced are being enacted as proposed, there are now claims that the Coalition is “in Government, but not in power”.
And we can see it for ourselves whenever we turn on Television New Zealand News. “Aotearoa” still features strongly as the name of our country, the Maori language continues to be liberally splashed around, and some weather presenters use only Maori placenames rendering the forecasts incomprehensible to most New Zealanders.
TVNZ is a flagship operation – high profile and State-owned. One would have expected it to uphold government policy.
Why they haven’t been brought into line more than a year after the election is a good question. Is it time to replace the Board? Or do management and senior staff need to go as well?
Whatever the solution, this dithering by the Coalition is making it look weak and foolish.
That government agencies are effectively thumbing their noses at official directives and getting away with it without consequences is totally unacceptable. The time for Ministerial rhetoric has passed. Labour’s dangerous agenda needs to be purged from every cul-de-sac within the public sector. Until the Coalition confronts and defeats this ‘enemy within’, their own policy platform remains largely ineffective.
When the country voted for change, we expected the new Government to be up to the task of delivering on their promises. We expected the bureaucracy to implement their policies fully.
If the Coalition wants to see an example of effective reform and follow-through, perhaps they should examine the performance of President Javier Milei in Argentina. Whilst his country still faces major challenges, and his approach is too confronting for most weak-kneed career-focused politicians, the progress he has made in only a year is undeniable.
An avowed libertarian, the former podcaster and economist campaigned for the Presidency – and for freedom – wielding a chainsaw. He promised to slash bureaucracy and wasteful government spending in order to bring hyperinflation under control. He told the public that the country’s dire situation had been caused by decades of collectivist policies, and he pledged to abolish or merge the seventeen government departments into nine, cut public sector jobs by 70,000, chainsaw 700 laws from the Statute books, and turn entrenched budget deficits into surpluses.
Elected as President with a 56 percent majority in late 2023, but needing the support of the former ruling party to govern, he has significantly reduced inflation, trimmed government departments, cut 30,000 public sector jobs, abolished 200 laws, and delivered a budget surplus.
He has done this without losing public support, despite the outcry from his left-wing opponents.
Not content with focussing on defeating socialism – which he sees as the gravest of all threats to western civilisation – in his own country, he now wants to help defeat it around the world.
Accordingly, at his first United Nations address late last year he explained Argentina would not support the UN’s Pact for the Future – a reconstruction of their deeply socialist Agenda 2030:
“The 2030 Agenda… is nothing more than a supranational government program, socialist in nature, which seeks to solve the problems of modernity with solutions that violate the sovereignty of nation states and violate people’s right to life, liberty and property… Argentina will not support any policy that implies the restriction of individual freedoms, or the violation of the natural rights of individuals, no matter who promotes it or how much consensus that institution has. For this reason, we wish to express our dissent on the Pact of the Future, and we invite all the nations of the free world to join us… in the creation of a new agenda for this noble institution: the agenda of freedom.”
The majority of countries – including New Zealand – supported the Pact of the Future.
While many problems lie ahead for Argentina, their latest policy initiative to reduce the size of their bloated bureaucracy demonstrates a determination to achieve their goals: starting 2025, new state employees can only be hired if three existing employees are fired within the same department.
This initiative echoes moves by President Trump, who has made deregulation a cornerstone of his economic policy, promising to cut regulations by 75 percent, freeze new regulations, and require agencies to eliminate two existing rules for every new one adopted.
Yet the progress of our Coalition in reducing the size of our bureaucracy – which exploded under Labour from 47,000 to almost 66,000 – has been dismal.
The latest workforce data shows that in September 2024, the public sector stood at 62,820 full time jobs, down from 65,699 in December 2023 – a loss of just 2,879 jobs!
This is not the sweeping reform that was promised.
The Coalition has a long way to go to restore the numbers back to where they were before Labour embedded their political allies deep within State institutions.
One of the greatest advocates of freedom in New Zealand used to be the mainstream media. The self-regulatory body, the Media Council still says on their website: “There is no more important principle in a democracy than freedom of expression. Freedom of expression and freedom of the media are inextricably bound.”
They claim ‘balance’ is a key principle: “Publications should be bound at all times by accuracy, fairness and balance and should not deliberately mislead or misinform readers by commission or omission. In articles of controversy… a fair voice must be given to the opposition view.”
Yet is spite of these admirable goals, ever since an adoring media assisted Jacinda Ardern’s rise to power, balance has largely been absent. Falling audience numbers are a testimony to that.
Whether they will recognise the problem and re-establish their credibility remains to be seen. To date, there is little evidence to suggest they will.
Democracy
We hoped He Puapua had died with the Ardern government.
Not so.
The He Puapua roadmap to replace democracy with tribal rule by 2040 – the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi – continues to threaten our democratic future.
An example of its continued influence can be seen in the recent consultation on the Ministry of Regulation’s proposed Regulatory Standards Bill.
Iwi leaders criticised it for not including a specific Treaty of Waitangi clause.
The discussion document, prepared by the new Ministry, states: “The Ministry for Regulation has produced a Treaty Impact Analysis, which provides the Ministry’s initial analysis of the Treaty impacts of the proposal.”
Yet New Zealanders were under the impression that when the Coalition pledged to “Stop all work on He Puapua”, the Treaty of Waitangi would no longer be a consideration in the governing of our country – except in Treaty settlements.
What the Regulation Ministry’s heavily redacted Treaty Impact Analysis shows is that the Government is still evaluating legislation against Treaty principles – guided by a radical Cabinet Office directive created by the Ardern Government to deliver He Puapua.
In other words, this brand-new Ministry has clearly embraced He Puapua.
What has also become clear over the last year is that a ‘softly, softly approach’ does not work against tribal activism.
There is only one way to stop this madness and that’s to draw a line in the sand and say “No”. All references to the Treaty (except from settlement legislation) and all references to race should be removed from the Statute books.
That’s what the NZCPR will be pushing for in 2025.
Racial privilege for some is racial discrimination against others. Are we all equal – or are some more equal than others?
The Coalition needs to get off the fence and decide.
Rule of Law
A further front of attack is political activism within the judiciary. The introduction of “tikanga” or Maori custom – which can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean – into the law, has been driven by the activist judges of the Supreme Court.
This week’ NZCPR Guest Commentator is former Judge and Law Lecturer Anthony Willy, an outspoken critic of the inclusion of tikanga in the law. He has identified a new emerging threat to the Rule of Law – the proposed introduction of “Bijural Law”.
He explains that merging Tikanga with the Common Law into a new “bijural” legal system for New Zealand is the objective of a newly appointed Judge to the Court of Appeal – and he is deeply concerned that someone with such radical intent would have been approved by this Government.
“Now we have Justice Christian Whata not only an advocate of tikanga but seeking to use it to develop his bijural system of law. If this is allowed to continue and if Parliament does not repeal the regulations requiring the insertion of tikanga in most law subjects, then litigation will become a lottery with the prize going to the most imaginative tikanga educated counsel…
“It requires no conspiracy theorising to see this as part of the wider drive to dismantle a pillar of our democracy and impose the pernicious Ardern He Puapua construct in which a small group of activist Maoris seek to impose their wishes on the public with the long-term goal of taking over the governance of New Zealand. The rot is now too deeply imbedded in our politics and in the law. To continue hoping, as do some of our political leaders, that it will go away, and commonsense and equal rights will prevail is utterly misguided. They will not.”
It is time the Coalition told us whether they intend to remove tikanga from the law – or allow it to fester and undermine the Rule of Law in New Zealand.
Conclusion
While the Coalition is clearly making progress in delivering their election pledges, they are weak in some of the key areas that underpin freedom, democracy, and the Rule of Law.
Many State institutions have been captured by radicals and continually undermine the Coalition. Through their biased reporting the mainstream media poisons the public’s mind against the new Government, and tribal leaders continue their lust for power, assisted not only by the public sector and the media, but also by the Courts.
That is the reality of New Zealand in 2025.
The Coalition has a year to turn things around so that as we begin the journey to the election, they can demonstrate they have the situation under control – instead of merely saying so.
Whether they are up to the task – remains the big question of 2025.
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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
*Do you believe the Coalition has the backbone to make the significant changes it promised?
*Poll comments are posted below.
*All NZCPR poll results can be seen in the Archive.
THIS WEEK’S POLL COMMENTS
| No, National are dragging their feet on defending equal rights in this country. They are still pandering to Maori leaders. Until they find the courage to do what is right for ALL New Zealanders – not the privileged few – the Coalition will NOT succeed. That would be a disaster for the country as the Maori Party will gain serious influence. National Party supporters need to persuade their MPs to do the right thing – and quickly! | David |
| The Coalition is doing many good things, but on the tough issues discussed in this newsletter, they are too weak. To be fair, NZ First and ACT are pulling their weight but National isn’t. That needs to change. | Murray |
| National is going down in the polls because they are not showing strong leadership where it counts. Christopher Luxon should study successful political leaders – if he did, he would find they provide leadership on tough issues rather than running away from them, which is what he does. | Pauline |
| It is imperative that the Coalition delivers on their promises and explains that to the nation. They should look at how Donald Trump got himself elected in spite of continual attacks by the mainstream media, so they develop a better means of communicating with those who supported them at the last election to explain what they are doing and the progress they are making. At the moment it is their attackers who are leading the public discourse. | Trevor |
| The Coalition is making good progress, but there are some tricky issues ahead. If they keep pulling together, they will succeed. | Simon |