When Jacinda Ardern was elected to the office of Prime Minister in 2017, she promised that her government would be the most open and transparent New Zealand has seen.
Ardern in her first formal speech to Parliament pledged: “This government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.”
Since her pledge to strengthen transparency and foster a more open and democratic society, her government has employed a large number of communications specialists and under their watch has maintained an iron grip on the control of information disseminated to the public.
At every level, the Government manipulates the flow of information with press conferences and announcements, which are often meaningless or repetitive and prevent sustained or detailed questioning.
The most open and transparent government that she promised appears to be pretty much non-existent in my opinion. This is partly because of the numbers of public relations staff that now seem to work to deflect and avoid, or answer questions from the electorate, in the most oblique manner possible.
Perhaps the most alarming trend is the almost complete refusal of government departments and agencies to allow the public to speak directly to staff.
The whole point of this communications strategy is to ensure that first and foremost, the government looks good and that the message is adequately controlled to make them look good.
It is the job of the media to act as the public’s watchdog and to ask the hard questions and hold the government to account on our behalf but that now seems to be a task that has been changed to one where the media has become another propaganda arm of the current government.
As a result of the Covid pandemic the government decided to set up what they called the Public Interest Journalism Fund. It was set up on the basis that it would offer financial support to the media organisations to counter the effects of the pandemic and if that was all it was I would support the fund 100%.
But in actual fact with the requirements for the media to access the financial support relying on their promotion of the government’s race based socialist agenda; I believe this fund is nothing more than the use of public funds to distribute government propaganda (or in other words corruption of the media) and as such I could never support it.
But unfortunately since Jacinda Ardern’s pledge to strengthen transparency and foster a more open and democratic society, it has now become much harder than ever to get information from this government.
Most Open and Transparent Government we’ve seen!
Not on this government’s watch, that’s for sure.
Andy Loader