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Like good little socialists, we happily allowed the government to lock us up in our homes, venturing out only to buy groceries or indulge in very loosely defined “exercise”. Not being specific about boundaries makes it very easy for self-appointed community police to dob us in to the real police if they think we are breaking curfew.
If we travel too far from home by car we might discover a brand new border set up by Iwi using roadblocks. You shall not pass, they say. The NZ Herald reported this story from the Northland Age.
“A Far North man has expressed genuine fear of the steps some took of their own volition last week to keep people out of Te Hiku.
“I am scared. Really scared. Not because of some virus. We have ways to deal with this. I am scared because our authorities allow people to take the law into their own hands. People with no authority, people with no mandate, who are not elected to represent the people by democratic rules,” he said.
“They are allowed to form a private militia, select their own people and block public roads. They are allowed to take away one of the basic human rights from us, the freedom to move.”
The resident, who did not wish to be identified for fear of retribution, said he was concerned enough when basic human rights were taken away by the government, and he accepted totally that “in these difficult times” it was necessary to restrict people’s movements. But that had to be done in an organised way, following the law.”
How easily do you think this Iwi, or any of the others around the country, will relinquish their newfound power?
And what about this government; punch drunk with COVID-19 success and basking in its new found emergency powers? Do you really think they will happily hand back control to the people? Instead, Dr Muriel Newman suggests they might use their new powers to pursue other objectives.
“… environmental fanatics have long been pressuring the Government to declare a state of emergency over clime change. Now that we understand how easy it is to impose one, can we be confident that in the future our Prime Minister won’t decree climate change – which she has already described as her generation’s ‘nuclear free moment’ – to be as catastrophic as COVID-19 and require similar state of emergency controls?”
In such a short time we have become surprisingly complacent about our serious loss of freedom. It didn’t bother us in the slightest when the initial government funding package for COVID-19 was blatantly hijacked for welfare. We simply rolled over and hoped for the best.
This government tightly controls the COVID-19 narrative by reluctantly drip-feeding crucial information. It was days before initial cases and clusters were made public and they still haven’t told us which suburbs harbour clusters.
Then there is the double standard in reporting: new cases are reported daily as diagnosed and suspected while deaths are only reported when a COVID-19 diagnosis is confirmed. The suspected COVID-19 death in an Invercargill home last Tuesday was not reported by the Director General in his daily briefing until 5 days later on 19th April. Suspected new cases are reported immediately! No one is bothered by either the government’s tardy reporting or its double reporting standard. We are far too easy to manipulate.
If this government is exceeding its legal powers, you won’t hear about it either from them or their pet media. Bob Edlin writing about the government’s “tacit approval” and “official indifference” to Iwi vigilantism made the following complaint to the prime minister when he was denied an explanation from the police to his question “what statutory authority underpinned Maori “border” checks?”
Our question about the statutory powers being applied had not been addressed, reinforcing our understanding there are none and that the check points are illegal, (a matter with profound implications for notions of law and order).
Most significantly, the Police say they “want to model what it looks like when iwi, police, councils and other agencies work in partnership”. We infer this means they are paving the way for a future in which Hone Harawira and other iwi leaders do their own policing…”
It’s okay for this government to whitewash COVID-19 facts and encourage vigilantes because we are so grateful to escape death by COVID-19 that we turn a blind eye. So why would we think this government will behave any differently when the lockdown ends?
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