Jacinda Ardern’s slide has not only started (if the angry articles across the NZ Mainstream media are anything to go by); her own supporters are furious.
Don’t take my word for it. Read the venom for yourselves:
Morally obscene and just plain bad politics. The Government’s public sector wage freeze is difficult to fathom.
The finance minister’s announcement of a public servant wage freeze for those earning over $60,000 hit all the wrong notes, sparked an outpouring of outrage from unions and the sectors involved, and drew comparisons of Muldoonism.
rnz
It provoked an almost immediate outcry from blind-sided public sector unions and workers – and a very rare firestorm against Labour from its own supporters on social media.
The Police Association was furious, describing it as a “bombshell” that arrived without warning on the same morning they met with Police Minister Poto Williams to start pay round talks.
NZ Herald
“For police officers the freeze comes when their work on the frontline of keeping all New Zealanders safe is becoming demonstrably more dangerous. Calls for mental health and suicide-related emergencies are growing, family violence callouts are up 11 percent year-on-year for the past four years, gang numbers are at an all-time high and organised crime is at such a peak $1 billion in assets have been seized in the last decade, and the threat and/or use of firearms are now almost a daily occurrence in policing.”
One officer told Newshub Nation: “We’ve put our f***ing bodies and families at risk to keep the country safe during COVID. Nobody is happy here. We feel like undervalued coalface workers. Morale is low.”
Newshub
Not to mention the additional work load for the police if the proposed hate speech laws go ahead.
The police force has increasingly been politicised under the Labour government. They have acted as good little foot soldiers during the lockdowns, enforcing laws that didn’t exist in some cases. Given the loyalty shown by the higher-ups to Ardern’s government, I can easily understand just how furious they will be with her latest brain fart. As for the ordinary cops on the street, forced to deal with increased crime due to Labour’s penchant for cuddling crims and taking firearms off the law-abiding instead of the criminals, they must be gutted and rightfully so.
Ardern is really between a rock and a hard place now. She needs to cut costs to pay for all her government’s spending (much of it untargeted and wasteful), but instead of culling the massive public service to cut costs she went for this incredibly unpopular wage freeze.
It is an unpalatable truth that unemployed former workers from the government bureaucracy will cost the government a lot less than they do while employed. A wise PM would slash and burn the bureaucracy and then pay those remaining well.
We cannot have fewer police officers, nurses or teachers but we can easily have fewer bureaucrats. Getting rid of all the working groups would be a good start.
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