The last Weekend Herald before Christmas featured a summing up of the political year from three of its regular opinion writers: Fran O’Sullivan, Mike Munro and Bruce Cotterill. Fran, a seasoned journalist, mostly writes objectively without fear or favour, as the saying goes, through her media lens. Mike Munro, the only one of the three who has been actively involved in politics, writes through his rose-coloured spectacles. Bruce Cotterill, of the right, writes from a business perspective of his view of the political world.
Fran started by saying it has taken a run of bad political polls, a poor showing in the Hamilton West by-election, and sloppy political management of the Three (Five) Waters reforms to force Jacinda Ardern to “trim for trial” in election year. She says getting back control of the narrative will be no easy feat. But prime ministers have considerable scope to set the agenda.
The problem for Ardern is that her agenda, being ideologically and race-based, is not what the majority of the voters want. We are not interested in vesting power in the hands of 18% of the population. That is not how a democracy works; it’s supposed to be one person one vote. Most of what she has supported, prioritised and allowed to be pushed through was not even campaigned on. She has allowed herself to be manipulated by a small ethnic minority of her caucus.
This calls her leadership into question. Any ‘talent’ she claims to have in her team is an illusion, which is how the reins have been taken over by Mahuta and Jackson, neither of whom one would rate highly. Her agenda leaves the country in an untenable situation. Domestic issues that should have been attended to have been either ignored, or at best, tinkered with, resulting in no meaningful improvements.
Fran quite rightly says all politics is essentially domestic. She says “trimming for trial” also means jettisoning colleagues who aren’t measuring up (if that’s true, Ardern will have none left) and “blooding others” to ensure a nucleus of experienced players to draw on. Who are they and when might that be? Guesses anybody?
Mike Munro has a different take although he does agree with Fran that it’s domestic politics that get the attention. However, he chooses to focus on the ‘triumphs’ of Ardern in trade negotiations overseas and ignores the disastrous performance on the home front. Instead, he asserts we have not paid enough attention to her great skills in the international arena.
Mike is particularly animated by the fact that Ardern’s meetings with Biden and Xi ran over allotted time, which he thinks indicates how effective Ardern was. Spare me. Biden probably spent the first half hour trying to ascertain who she was and where she came from. Xi probably let her ramble on while calculating how easy a takeover of the country would be. The fact is, most of the intelligent discourse and therefore deals secured would have come from the businessmen accompanying her on the trip.
Speaking of businessmen, Bruce Cotterill reflects just what a disaster this Labour government is on the domestic front, fiddling with their own ideologies while big issues have been left to fester. He says he’s been observing a government consisting of people who are distracted by issues that are less important than the needs of the country and its people.
Agree. In a word, IDEOLOGY.
He lists distractions such as climate change, freedom of speech (cracking down on either attracts big headlines on the world stage), historical grievances and even mythology. Covering all the Government’s promises and subsequent failures in housing, health, education, crime and poverty, Cotterill ridicules them for their charade of ‘kindness’ during Covid and the centralisation of health and tertiary education. The RNZ-TVNZ merger falls into the same category. This government’s desperate desire to be recognised and approved by their “global networks” of do-gooders is yet another distraction.
He takes a swipe at the judiciary and decisions that have resulted in some commentators suggesting their activist approach is setting law in advance of Parliament. He says this is something we should be questioning.
He targets Robertson and Orr for encouraging first-home buyers into an overheated property market based on cheap money which was only ever going to become more expensive in the near term. He says it was one of the greatest disgraces of the last five years; thanks to this Government’s fixation on distractions, we have a fleet of ambulances at the bottom of the cliff and no fences at the top.
In my view, it’s becoming abundantly clear that under this so-called leader, everyone is flexing their muscles thinking they have carte blanche to do whatever they like
So what do we do about it?
We VOTE THE BUGGERS OUT, repeal the last three years and start again, but Cotterill concludes that might be easier said than done. I say, be careful where you place your vote.
