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The Enduring Legacy of PM Ardern

It’s all part of the enduring legacy of Jacinda Ardern, which, after all, was all about posturing, image and looking good on the stage.

Photo by Andrew Yu / Unsplash

The price of LPG is going up, the gas man tells me. From March it will cost me $37 instead of $32 to have my 9kg bottle refilled. This, he tells me, is because of the oil and gas exploration being stopped. New Zealand now doesn’t have enough gas and is importing it from Australia.

I’m sure it would be tedious to point out that stopping oil and gas exploration doesn’t reduce the amount of oil and gas being used or the pollution being produced by it. Or that importing gas from Australia causes more pollution and uses more oil. It’s all part of the enduring legacy of Jacinda Ardern, which, after all, was all about posturing, image and looking good on the world stage.

The same ethos of posturing on the ‘climate action’ stage brought us the end of bitumen production at Marsden Point in 2020. We now import inferior quality bitumen from overseas, which is one of the reasons why our roads are continually falling apart.

At least when Simeon Brown was the minister of transport, he did cut funding for ‘temporary traffic management’, leading to a noticeable reduction in the number of road cones and temporary speed limits areas. Previously, these were being left in place for days after the road works had finished, simply so that the contractors responsible could charge more.

Nevertheless, with poor quality bitumen and an ever-increasing number of logging trucks from the ‘carbon’ forests, road works are still increasing. My eldest son tells me that, according to ChatGPT, if present trends continue, New Zealand’s roads will be completely lined with road cones in 93 years’ time.

Now a Cabinet reshuffle has seen Simeon Brown promoted to the position of minister of health. Evidently he is expected to take the same no-nonsense approach to making the medical system more useful and efficient. Given the amount of pain and stress experienced by people on hospital waiting lists, that is probably even more desirable than a reduction in road cones. Let’s hope he succeeds.

Of course, the more morally minded might be hoping that a Christian MP would take action against abortion and euthanasia, or try to stop the weaponisation of healthcare against the people. It probably doesn’t hurt to hope for such things but, realistically, the mood of society limits what governments can do. That is why, when they want to do something terribly detrimental to the populace, they have to try to change the mood through some form of messaging or propaganda.

Whoever is responsible for it, the majority of Kiwis want abortion and euthanasia to be legal, and the majority are still in the ‘health’ system and believe that it can make them well. Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with the death cult that the ‘health’ system has become. And, until oil and gas exploration resume and Marsden Point re-opens, we will be stuck with expensive fuel and disintegrating roads. It’s all part of Jacinda Ardern’s legacy of kindness.

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