Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last year called for bold action on climate change as a matter of life and death and declared an environmental emergency calling for urgency in implementing the recommendations of the Climate Change Commission.
Why is she so dramatically advocating policies that will be likely to seriously damage our ability to fund our overseas debts through our agricultural export earnings? There is no evidence that we are faced with a life or death decision with regard to climate change. In fact the only real emergency is that many of her decisions to urgently implement the recommendations of the commission are very likely to spell economic disaster for us as a country.
Given our size, in comparison with major producers of carbon dioxide, our emissions reductions will not make any noticeable difference to the total global CO2 emissions. Russia, for example, is reportedly spending over $10 billion to boost its coal exports. Major producers in India, Australia, Russia and South Africa are promoting mining projects to increase global outputs and China is constructing over one hundred new coal mines, as well as developing shale oil deposits.
Prime Minister Ardern and her dedicated, socialist comrades in her Labour government apparently are following the socialist propaganda advanced by the far Left. However, New Zealanders are gradually realising that the hard-core, socialist ideology and hidden agendas of this government are undermining the basic fabric of our country and destroying our democracy.
By using the fears of the supposedly catastrophic consequences of climate change coupled with the fears of the outcomes from the current global pandemic, they have become a very convenient smokescreen for much of this government’s race-based undemocratic decision making. This has also been helped by the failure of the now government funded media to realistically challenge this process. Most of our major media organisations, have, to their disgrace, consistently refused to allow any dissenting points of view to be published, no matter how well-qualified the dissenters or how well-proven the facts.
The failure of the Media to do the job that is expected of them (“watchdog” of political democracy.) is largely a result of the requirements of the Public Interest Journalism Fund which requires the media to support the government’s policies particularly in relation to the so-called Treaty Partnership.
Jacinda Ardern’s plummeting popularity indicates a country questioning not only her racist attacks of our democracy, but the hypocrisy of her kindness and well-being mantras. The economic, mental and emotional well-being of New Zealanders has been far from prioritised by her Labour coalition doing extraordinary damage – and determined on more of the same, judging from the controversial legislation it continues to ram through.
She recently stated that “we must not use the post-Covid recovery to return to business as usual”. Business as usual, what does she mean by that? Because of her government’s inexperience in both governance and economics, thousands of businesses have been ruined with individuals and livelihoods destroyed beyond any chance of recovery as result of the control measures taken in relation to the Covid pandemic.
Her Labour government has turned a blind eye to the sheer cruelty underpinning so much current policy, with one classic example being the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) places periodically opened for New Zealanders desperate to get home (some no longer with jobs, or being unable to pay rent overseas).
The application for MIQ places was nothing more than a government run lottery that refused entry to New Zealand for a large number of its own citizens because the government did not provide either enough facilities for them or a workable system for self-isolation at home.
Yet her government refused to commit providing more MIQ facilities for those forced to quarantine, coming into the country including New Zealand citizens, even denying access to those with dying relatives yet international DJs were conveniently allocated places in MIQ when fully vaccinated New Zealanders were still denied entry.
What about the pensioners trapped overseas, refused entry to their country of citizenship, threatened with having to pay back their pensions because they had stayed beyond the permissible date allowed?
However, the pregnant New Zealand journalist in Afghanistan who was refused entry and applied for Taliban protection has now been given an MIQ spot, as a result of media pressure.
A democratic country cannot refuse to allow its own citizens to enter so Jacinda Ardern’s government used the threat of huge fines to prevent international airlines from carrying New Zealand Citizens into the country without proof of a negative vaccination and an allocated spot in MIQ. A fine example of the government’s Kindness in decision making.
There has been a nationwide protest about the allocation system for MIQ spots, spearheaded by opposition National MP Chris Bishop and as a result this seems to have forced the government to change the system to allow, first vaccinated New Zealanders, and then later other nationalities, to self-isolate on entry, with no longer any need to be held in dedicated MIQ facilities.
For Jacinda Ardern who has promised Kindness as a key plank of her government policy, to be overseeing so many sad or disgraceful incidents where people have been treated shockingly by her government is unforgivable. Where has the concern been for the well-being of so many needy individuals desperate, even ill, both physically and mentally, being denied the ability to simply come home – even by self-isolating?
The Ardern government’s forced move to enable home quarantine and open the borders is too little, too late. Its staged and delaying tactics are typical of the over-control exercised for so long.
New Zealanders are not going to forget that the plight of so many of our people was simply ignored by this Prime Minister and her government.
Andy Loader