It is almost exactly a year since the last election, when the country gave Jacinda Ardern and her government the largest mandate ever recorded under MMP. It was a testimonial to what most people thought was a successful pandemic response that had saved us from having thousands dead. Clearly, those voting had turned a completely blind eye to the government’s shocking record on housing, mental health, poverty, the loss of tourism (and the mega-dollars that come with it) and their treatment of farmers, and thought that saving us from COVID was the only thing that mattered.
That is what a daily party political broadcast will do for you.
But one year on, the country has changed radically, in ways that we could never have imagined last October. The country is poorer and more divided than ever, with racist policies about to turn us into the South Africa of the Pacific.
I could go on about He Puapua and Three Waters, but it is the latest change that is causing me the most concern. Somewhere along the line, gangs seem to have gone from the drug-dealing criminals that they truly are to agents for Jacinda Ardern’s government.
Let’s start with this.
For those of you that saw it, Saturday evening’s TV1 News was full of praise for a gang leader who got vaccinated.
What a hero.
But more than that, Tame also spent some time on Twitter defending Harry Tam against claims made by Winston Peters.
Now, why exactly is Tame taking the side of a notorious criminal over the word of a former Deputy Prime Minister? Most of you know I have had little time for Peters over the years, but I would take his word over that of a gang leader any day. ANY DAY!
Tame is not alone.
Another media personality discrediting the word of a former DPM over the word of a notorious criminal.
Why are they all supporting the gangs?
I know what you are about to say: Tame is a soyboy and Sean Plunket is a blowhard, but that is not the point. These people, with a lot of influence, are telling us that the gangs are OK really. They are just misunderstood, and we should believe them over the word of a politician with over 40 years in parliament… someone who understands the risk of speaking falsehoods to the public.
Oh well. That’s all right then. Harry Tam would never lie, would he? After all, he is an upstanding member of our community – so much so that he has the ear and the trust of our own prime minister.
Do you see how ridiculous and terrifying this is becoming?
It seems that there are two lots of rules in this country at the moment; one for the gangs who are encouraged to travel around and are given special exemptions to do so, and one for the rest of us who are locked up in our homes. But isn’t there something intrinsically wrong about this?
The gangs are spreading COVID everywhere. The government is simply turning a blind eye to it. The Northland case is almost certainly gang related. The government has sanctioned widespread infections by locking down everyone except those who are spreading the disease in the first place.
The Press Gallery knows this, as they ask questions about gang connections every day. This is most likely a case of asking questions to which you already know the answers, but over and over again, they are stonewalled. Chris Hipkins will say he has ‘no information’ about that. Jacinda says there is no truth in the rumours about Harry Tam taking a prostitute to Northland, thereby calling her own former DPM a liar. She would rather protect the gangs. That is the sorry state of politics in New Zealand right now.
In the midst of all this, 60 new COVID cases were recorded on Sunday. Let us not pretend that at least some of those were not caused by gang movements in and out of controlled areas.
The government has driven itself into a corner over the gangs. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle; how many other governments around the world have softened their approach to organised crime, only to find themselves totally at the mercy of hardened criminals? There is no way the government can go back now… the gangs have them well and truly under control.
Ask any policeman, current or former, what they think about the gangs. They are unlikely to approve of the government’s softly-softly approach. More likely they will tell you that they are so bad that most of us cannot even imagine the evil deeds that they are capable of. Such are the new friends of our government.
Jacinda often claims that the things she does are ‘world leading’. Most of the time, she is either lying or deluding herself, but here is a new claim she can make. Hers is the first New Zealand government truly controlled by hardened criminals.
We have often said that New Zealand is the Venezuela of the South Pacific, but now we have another milestone to be proud of. We are also the Colombia of the South Pacific. How we came to this in one short year is totally beyond my comprehension.
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