Back in 2020 New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, declared ‘Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth,’ in a speech related to Covid health advice.

 

She also promised us that her government would be the most open and transparent we have ever had.

 

Her delusional self-importance and elevation of her government to a position of ‘absolute unquestioned truth’ was a sign that her leadership had gone beyond its charter and embarked on a Socialist-style system of absolutism led by a centralised decision making system.

 

It is easy enough to point out the obvious flaw in Ardern’s reasoning.

 

The last two years have revealed the weakness, not strength, of centralised control.

 

The suggestion that a government has some sort of special ordained knowledge is nonsense and with the benefit of hindsight, which is always perfect, we can see that she has been wrong many times with her decisions.

 

The Covid lockdowns were ordered by the government, and yet there is an increasingly opinion that they did more harm than good and should never be attempted again.

 

What about the Ardern pursuit of a Covid Zero New Zealand? How many press conferences were given insisting that New Zealand had conquered the virus and that government measures would protect New Zealand forever? These policies are now seen as having been ‘absurd’ and ‘damaging’.

 

This is the same government that has put forward the Three Waters Reform and the agricultural GHG emissions pricing proposals; the appointment of unelected race based local body representatives; race based health management; co-governance; etc.

 

One of the reasons governments are desperate to become the central source of information and truth is that fending off opposing thought requires evidence and robust debate. Ministers do not want their policies challenged as this can signal political weakness if they fail to win the debate.

 

Even with the claims of openness, transparency and truth this government is facing huge challenges to their policies, many of which are in effect removing our democratic rights.

 

Many of these policy decisions have been made in secret and pushed through the parliamentary approval processes under urgency so as to reduce the ability for others to challenge them.

 

The government has used a claim of partnership under the Treaty of Waitangi as justification for many of these policies, saying that they are needed to redress the past decisions by NZ governments and that they are required under our obligations as a signatory to the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples rights (UNDRIP).

 

These so called justifications are all fabrications with no basis in fact or truth. There is no mention anywhere in the Treaty document of a partnership and in fact many respected Maori elders have in the past rejected these claims. The UNDRIP document itself declares that it is not a binding agreement and there is also the fact that Maori are by their own history, not indigenous to NZ, just early migrants from Hawai’iki.

 

In regard to the Agricultural emissions pricing proposals these are supposedly justified by the claim that we need to take action on climate change under the Paris Accord which we are a signatory to, yet the proposal itself is in breach of section 2b of the Paris accord which states that:

 

The aim of the agreement is to have a stronger response to the danger of climate change; it seeks to enhance the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change through:

 

(a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;

 

(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;

 

The proposals for the Three Waters Reforms are supposed to be about ensuring that we can rehabilitate degraded waterways and that we have good quality water available in the future, but in actual fact they are more about taking ownership of the water infrastructure assets from the ratepayers who have funded them over many generations, and transferring control of those assets to an unelected tribal elite of Maori.

 

These proposals were said to be voluntary for councils to join but in actual fact it has finally been acknowledged that this was not true and the proposals had been mandated for all councils as compulsory even before they were consulting with the local bodies on whether they wanted to join the scheme or not.

 

In October last year the Wairarapa Times-Age featured a quote from Masterton councillor Tina Nixon about Three Waters, and on the front page the phrase “a deceitful, lying pack of bastards” was plastered across it in huge type.

 

It has become very clear to everyone that the “consultation” on the Three Waters Reforms has been a sham all along with many different hidden agendas at play.

 

So much for openness, transparency and truth.

 

Hearing the near deification of government should send a warning signal to every citizen that their democracy is heading in the direction of authoritarianism under the guise of ‘safety’ and public health.

 

The government can declare itself the source of all truth, but that does not make it true.

 

This government has been promoting destruction of our democracy; racial segregation and infringements of our civil liberties since the election in 2020 and the only way to stop it happening again is to vote them out of government in 2023.