In February 2020 I wrote an article regards the Prime Minister’s Score Card and given that I have had some time to do so I have updated that article as of the middle of December 2021. Prime Minister Ardern has had the first twelve months of her current term of office and I thought that it was an appropriate time to analyse her government’s achievements since winning the last election with an absolute majority.
She cited child poverty as her reason for entering politics. When she first ran for Prime Minister, she declared climate change was her ‘generation’s nuclear free moment’.
On both of those, she has failed comprehensively. All the child poverty statistics are the same or worse and her climate change commitments are a sad joke. She has basically shut down the coal mining industry in New Zealand (supposedly to eliminate the use of fossil fuelled energy) and then sat and watched as we have imported millions of tonnes of dirty coal from Indonesia, so that we have been able to keep the lights on without saying a word.
We are sitting on huge coal reserves yet we are importing dirty coal and her government says nothing because it may show how stupid her decision was to try to claim the high ground in the name of reaction to the effects of climate change.
I cannot think of a major policy from her election manifestos that has not been a failure. She told us she would make houses more affordable; yet their costs have risen so high that first home owners cannot even hope to buy let alone actually be able to “afford” to buy in the current market.
She promised us 100,000 Kiwi-build homes, but actually only succeeded in sacking her Minister after his failing so spectacularly.
She promised Auckland would get a light rail system from the city centre to the airport and has failed to lay even a single centimetre of track.
These examples and many others all go to show that her government has made a bad habit of failure after bold promises, over its terms in office.
In early 2019, she said that she would promote a new ‘economics of kindness’ which was demonstrated shortly afterwards in her first ‘well-being budget’. We have all seen the results of that budget (for example it earmarked funds to fix mental health, but her government could not find any projects in the first twelve months, on which to spend the money).
Jacinda Ardern has shown great expertise in communications making almost daily TV appearances throughout the coronavirus crisis and this huge level of exposure on almost a daily basis in the run up to the 2020 election must have been of immense help in promoting her government leading up to that election.
In the 2020 election campaign, she should have struggled to explain why her governments promises had failed, but no one asked any accountability questions and she was elected with an absolute majority based on the public perception of her image.
The gap between people’s impression of her leadership and her actual performance as a leader has widened appreciably since the election and it is way past time the people of New Zealand started demanding accountability for the government promises that have failed.
She promised the people of New Zealand that she would provide the most open and transparent government and at one time even stated they were the one source of truth and we should only believe the government.
Overall the truth is not quite so rosy though because when you look at the government’s statistics, on practically every single metric her administration has failed.
Child poverty levels have risen under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership, as have carbon emissions. The gun buy-back scheme implemented after the Christchurch mosque attack was nothing short of an expensive PR disaster that actually achieved very little in real results.
Since again taking power after the last election, with an absolute majority, she has assumed unprecedented additional powers most under the pretext of protecting our health.
Her government has introduced a bill under which they have proposed a separate Health system for Maori managed by Maori and with the power of veto over all health board funding throughout New Zealand.
As New Zealanders we have always prided ourselves on being an inclusive multi-racial society. Yet under the present Labour Government we are heading down a path of separatism with our society divided by race based on a factually incorrect interpretation of Treaty of Waitangi documentation.
They have many times stated that we have a partnership requirement with Iwi, under the Treaty of Waitangi but in actual fact this is just another lie from this government.
This claim of a partnership between Maori and the Crown is not supported by any of the documentation of the Treaty although this latter-day reinterpretation of the Treaty is simply stated as a fact, without any acknowledgement that the assertion is hotly contested, is flatly contradicted by many of the speeches recorded by Colenso in writing at the time (on 5 February 1840) and flatly contradicted also by speeches made by numerous chiefs at Kohimarama in 1860.
A starting point to consider in relation to the question of a partnership would be to consider and understand the wise words of a prominent leader respected by Pakeha & Maori alike.
‘The Hon Sir Apirana Ngata -M.A. LLB. LIT.D’
(THE TREATY OF WAITANGI – an explanation published in 1922)
The acclaimed Maori Leader Sir Apirana Ngata explains the intent in the pages of this book, the “Treaty of Waitangi”. He concludes with the words: “The Treaty made the one law for the Maori and Pakeha. If you think these things are wrong and bad then blame our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful”.
We have just recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1981 South African Springbok tour of New Zealand, an event that deeply divided our nation.
More than 150,000 people took to the streets to protest against sporting contact with South Africa, a country that defined and divided its people by race/colour through a formal system of Apartheid established in 1948.
There were many protests over the years demanding that New Zealand stop all sporting contact with South Africa (particularly Rugby), apartheid was abandoned.
In 1981 the then Prime Minister Rob Muldoon, invited the Springboks back and for two months New Zealand became a nation at war with itself.
But obviously that means nothing to this government as they look to implement this same odious race based system of apartheid into New Zealand.
This Labour Government under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is elevating Maori (12.6% of the total population in the 2018 census) to the status of a ruling class through their interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi giving Maori a partnership/co-governance role.
As New Zealand continues down this separatist path set out by Jacinda Ardern and her current government, New Zealand will increasingly become an apartheid nation, where those claiming Maori heritage are given superior rights over everyone else.
On the basis of false assumptions and fabrications, democracy is being sacrificed, and New Zealand returned to tribal rule.
Another claimed justification for making these race based decisions to elevate Maori to a ruling class is NZ’s obligations after the signing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Jacinda Ardern’s government commissioned a report which she claimed was about developing a strategy to fulfil our obligations under that declaration. Jacinda Ardern stated that the report titled “He Puapua” was an advisory document but this was at best a disingenuous statement as parts of that document have already been enacted and as such it is the beginning of division of our country based on race (Apartheid any way you look at it).
Part of the He Puapua report defines the pathway to achieve Maori sovereignty by 2040 and the implementation of parts of that report which has been done in secret without any public referendum or mandate other than their victory in the last election will not stand up to public scrutiny.
This report was kept secret even from her coalition partner (New Zealand First) before the last election and was eventually only released after a full copy was leaked to news media outlets and published. This being another example of our most open and transparent government at work!
This being the same Open and Transparent Government that set up the $55 million “Public Interest Journalism Fund”. We were told was to help the media deal with the effects of Covid, but like lots of other decisions, the devil was in the detail.
When it was analysed we could see that this was another prop under Prime Minister Ardern’s government attempts to divide New Zealand on the basis of race, given the requirements for recipients to promote the government’s position in regard to their current interpretation of the Treaty documents.
One of the reasons I say this is that under condition three, all fund recipients are required to “Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.
The Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz recently resigned over allegations that he had used public money to buy favourable media coverage for his party’s policies.
In regard to the “Public Interest Journalism Fund” here in New Zealand the same principles seem to apply as there is a direct link between the funding and the promotion of Government policy. Does this not equate to corruption of the media by government? At the very least it effectively means that the media have been silenced by this current Labour government.
Another example of the openness and transparency of this government, being when a number of current government ministers stated that they were proud to be quoted as being socialists but this was something they had never mentioned prior to the election, but then again maybe we should expect that type of conduct as they were trying to win an election and at that time honesty, openness or transparency in election manifestos is not really required by politicians; IS IT?
Ardern’s government has assumed a large range of powers and made a lot of decisions that are being claimed to have been required in response to the coronavirus pandemic but in fact this claim is very hard to justify, especially when you look at the government’s actions since the 2020 election, in regard to the pandemic and our responses to it.
With those powers they instituted the lockdowns on the basis of stopping the spread of Covid 19 and protecting our health. We were told that they had gone early and gone fast and that it was all going to prevent the overloading of our hospitals and their ICU capacities.
We were told that the health system did not have the capacity to handle a large increase in the numbers that would be presenting to ICU if we did not have the lockdowns in place and while this in itself may have been quite true, the government failed to take action to ensure that the health system was upgraded to cope with the expected demand.
No in fact they carried on making ridiculous decisions that can only be seen as evidence that collectively the government was totally out of its depth in dealing with the pandemic and its outcomes.
A classic example of their stupidity was the decision to build a cycle bridge over the Auckland harbour; a $685 million bridge, and then when they finally conceded how stupid the decision had been and cancelled it, they carried on paying to complete plans for the bridge to tune of approximately another $50 million.
Here we had a promise from the government to fund a bridge across the harbour that was going to cost at least $685million, and if history is to be replicated a total cost well in excess of this figure as is often the case with infrastructure projects, when extras and inflation are taken into account.
At the time Starship Hospital urgently needed 10 new state-of-the-art intensive care bed spaces, and with each bed space costing more than $400,000 the $685million projected cost could have paid for at least:
Or a combination of the above!
If our health system was in such a poor state why were they not prioritising spending around more capacity for dealing with the effects from Covid, such as adding ICU beds and hiring more nurses and doctors, instead of concentrating on stupid grandstanding decisions such as the Skypath Cycle Bridge across Auckland Harbour?
Unbelievably misguided foolish decision making that is totally removed from any sense of reality!!!
Jacinda Ardern has made many statements since taking over office as Prime Minister and has very rarely been challenged on them but it is time she explained what she actually meant when she made these claims.
Some examples of her government’s openness, transparency and “one source of truth”:
The Prime Minister told us last year that Kiwis would not be penalised if they chose not to vaccinate, yet that is exactly what she has now done. And these are only a few of the U-turns that this government has made.
Openness; Transparency and Truthfulness seem pretty foreign to this mob.
So, on my updated scorecard I would have to use the whole alphabet to get an accurate grade for her; given the almost universal failure of her government on practically every metric coupled with the damage that her government has done to our democracy and racial harmony through her championing of race based policies.
If I was able to use the whole alphabet then I would grade her with an X an abysmal failure.
Andy Loader