Jacinda Ardern’s Government has also villainised farmers through draconian law change proposals that include punitive taxes on livestock emissions and unworkable water quality restrictions. These will undermine a backbone industry that the country relies on for export earnings.
Under the Labour Government, social wellbeing is also deteriorating.
New Zealand is continuing to slide in education. According to the latest three-yearly Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which compares 15-year-olds from 65 countries in reading, science, and maths, New Zealand is failing to improve its rankings.
When the tests started in 2000, New Zealand ranked 3rd in reading, 7th in science and 4th in mathematics. The latest results of 6,200 New Zealand students from 194 schools produced a ranking of 11th in reading and 12th in science – the same as the 2015 result – while maths has slipped from 21st to 27th.
In the latest tests, China led in every subject, followed by Singapore, with Macau in third place.
Shamefully, the New Zealand report also indicated an alarming increase in bullying, a significant rise in truancy, and an increasingly negative attitude towards school by students.
Under Labour, health outcomes are also in serious decline. Since health targets were removed in 2017, for the first time in a decade, the number of elective surgeries performed in New Zealand has dropped – by 6,000. Immunisation rates have fallen from 92.2 percent to 90.1 percent, the proportion of cancer patients treated within the timeframe guidelines has declined from 93.2 percent to 87.6 percent, and Emergency Department patients seen within six hours has fallen from 93.1 percent to 90 percent.
Meanwhile, hospital waiting lists in many parts of the country have exploded with thousands more sick people waiting for specialist assessments and operations.
In spite of employers crying out for workers, the latest benefit statistics from the Ministry of Social Development show the total number of working age New Zealanders on welfare has risen from 277,000 when Labour came to office, to almost 300,000.
The number of Jobseekers has risen 18 percent to 143,000 – the highest level since the global financial crisis.
MSD has admitted that this is largely due to a Government directive changing their focus from getting people into jobs, to providing financial assistance. As a result, while the number of special needs grants has increased by 75 percent from 200,000 to 350,000 a year, there is no pro-active work expectation for almost 80 percent of the unemployed.
When it comes to climate change, the rise of Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish girl with Asperger’s Syndrome as the anointed leader of the climate movement, highlights how the United Nations global warming agenda has become a social justice cult. The irony is that while we live in an information age, it’s no longer scientific facts that are being shared, but social hysteria.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is part of the problem. With her eyes firmly on the global stage, she has forced the world’s most punishing carbon restrictions onto New Zealand. She expects Kiwis to make significant economic sacrifices, while other leaders in other countries like China and India continue their focus on growing their economies and lifting living standards.
This year has also shown us just how determined the Maori sovereignty movement is to gain power – and how successful they have been. Their demands for race-based ‘solutions’ now pervade virtually every aspect of our community including the criminal justice system.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, veteran journalist Bob Edlin of the Point of Order blog, outlines how Labour’s Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis is appeasing Maori sovereignty activists by ‘softening’ prison vocabulary “to reduce reoffending”:
“Davis is keen to have miscreants’ mana restored in establishments where prison officers are encouraged to regard the people in their custody not as a ‘prisoner’ or ‘offender’ but as ‘men in our care’ (at least in a prison for men). In Tongariro Prison the flawed citizens in their care are being called ‘paihere’… a term developed in consultation with local iwi, Ngati Tuwharetoa.”
Bob explains that with 10,000 prisoners in its custody, Corrections’ new strategy will require staff to refer to prisoners as ‘clients’, ‘people in our care’, ‘paihere’, or to call them by their first names. Words like ‘muster’ will also be banned.
But going soft on prisoners is madness – and that’s what many prison officers are saying about these new changes. Prison is meant to be a punishment – a deterrent to help prevent crime. It is not supposed to be a holiday camp.
The timing of Labour’s decision to make prisons a kinder place is particularly bizarre, since thousands of criminals are being deported back to New Zealand from Australia.
A 2014 Australian law change allowed non-citizens sentenced to a year in prison to be sent back to their home country. Many of the more than 1,200 Kiwis who have been returned are gang members, and as a result, Australian gangs – including the Rebels, Comancheros, Bandidos, and the Mongols – are now setting up chapters in New Zealand.
This is contributing to the number of patched gang members now growing at the fastest rate since the 1970s, with an increase of 1,400 in the past two years – a 26 percent rise since Labour became the Government.
With over 6,700 gang members in New Zealand, what this country does not need is a government that’s going soft on crime.
to be continued…
