WE DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE JACINDA

One year into Labour’s three-year term as a majority government, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s honeymoon is coming to an end. The public now know the destination she is taking our country, and it is not where we want to go. Finally, we, the people, are saying enough is enough.

By Dr Muriel Newman

The latest Roy Morgan poll shows support for Labour slipping from 50 percent on election night to 39.5 percent. That would result in fourteen Labour MPs losing their seats. Confidence in the Government has fallen 15.5 points to 109.5 – the lowest rating since the Prime Minister came to office four years ago.

If we were to write to Jacinda Ardern, to outline why New Zealanders don’t love her anymore, we’d probably say something like this: 

Dear Jacinda,

When you became Labour Party leader, seven weeks before the 2017 election, you had been a little-known list MP.

We now know that nine months before being elected to Parliament in 2008, you had become President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. The fact that instead of immediately resigning from that role after becoming an MP, you continued on as President for a further fifteen months, should have caused concern – especially after a video emerged showing you referring to conference attendees as “comrades” fifteen times in seven minutes.

Being trusting people, we didn’t think that meant you were a communist.

We saw the media fawning over your elevation to Party leader so enthusiastically that the term “Jacindamania” was coined. And we noted that these media cheerleaders, gave you favourable coverage during the election campaign.

In spite of that, Labour received 956,000 votes or 36.9 percent, while 1,152,000 New Zealanders – 44.4 percent – supported National.

That result showed the country had overwhelmingly voted for conservatism and stability.

But Winston Peters, holding the balance of power and ignoring the wishes of the majority of voters, anointed you as our 40^th Prime Minister.

Kiwis are fair minded, and you were given the chance to prove yourself. But while you had great communication skills, and what appeared to be genuine empathy, it soon became clear that true to your hard line roots you intended to impose destructive socialist extremism onto New Zealand.

The first indication of your intention was your unilateral decision to ban new deep sea oil drilling to effectively close down New Zealand’s oil and gas industry. This was done without warning, without consultation, and without Cabinet approval, on the eve of your first overseas trip as Prime Minister – allegedly so you could look decisive on the world stage.

We saw this again following the Christchurch terror attack – even though the perpetrator was a deranged foreigner, you cracked down on the rights of law-abiding Kiwi firearm owners without warning, consultation, or proper justification. Driven by a seemingly insatiable desire for international recognition, you appeared oblivious to the livelihoods and lifelong interests you were destroying.

We then became concerned in 2019 to hear you tell a meeting hosted by Bill Gates, that without our knowledge, you were imposing the United Nations Agenda 2030 onto New Zealand: “My Government is doing something not many other countries have tried. We have incorporated the principles of the 2030 Agenda into our domestic policy-making in a way that we hope will drive system-level actions. I believe that the change in approach that we have adopted in New Zealand is needed at a global scale.”

But while you were successfully embedding the UN’s socialist agenda into every regulation and law change, your election promises of building affordable housing, reducing homelessness, and eliminating child poverty were all turning into dismal failures.

And even though the media had largely stuck by you, by the end of 2019 the growing discontent – especially within the business and farming sectors that were facing a tsunami of restrictive rules and regulations – was so widespread it was reflecting in the polls, indicating yours was likely to be a one-term government.

That is until Covid-19 came along early in election year.

Covid became a socialist leader’s dream. It enabled emergency measures curtailing freedom and liberty to be embedded into every facet of our lives – with minimal Parliamentary scrutiny.

Under the guise of fighting Covid you hired a multi-million-dollar Rolls Royce communications team to provide you with expert advice: as long as you could keep fear of Covid top of mind right up to voting day, your re-election was assured.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Winning over 50 percent support from New Zealanders was a remarkable achievement.

On election night you assured the country you would govern for ‘all’ Kiwis: “We will not take your support for granted. And I can promise you, we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.”

We wanted to believe you.

But we now know, those words were a lie.

The separatist agenda you unleashed is unprecedented in New Zealand’s history.

We now know that you concealed the ‘He Puapua’ blueprint – to replace democracy with tribal rule – for 12 months prior to the election.

That report reveals your plan is to introduce 50:50 co-governance, to give the Maori elite, who represent just 15 percent of the population, disproportionate power and unimaginable authority over the lives of the 85 percent of other New Zealanders.

Why did you not tell us during the election campaign that you intended to transfer democratic power to an unelected and unaccountable tribal aristocracy so they can control New Zealand for their own benefit?

Since you didn’t reveal those intentions before the election, you have no mandate from New Zealanders to replace democracy with tribal rule.

And while you have denied ‘He Puapua’ is Labour Party policy, it’s clear that is another lie.

New Zealanders are not stupid – we have read the He Puapua report and we can see that the laws you are now enacting are part of this agenda for tribal control.

In health, when you realised that a Maori Health Authority with the right of veto over the entire health system couldn’t be established under the decentralised District Health Board model, without any consultation you announced that DHBs would be abolished. You have no mandate to replace community control of health with a centralised apartheid bureaucracy prioritising Maori over those with more serious medical needs.

Putting race ahead of need is not the New Zealand way. It is shocking and callous. How can anyone with genuine empathy and a clear conscience possibly think it’s OK? And restructuring the entire health system during a pandemic is not only ideological madness, but it borders on being criminally reckless.

In education you are allowing Maori extremists to dictate the curriculum and indoctrinate children with a worldview that denigrates our history and the people who helped build our nation.

In local government, you abolished the democratic rights of local communities to reject plans to divide them by race. It seems clear that this was the first step towards the He Puapua goal of tribal control of local authorities.

You have no mandate for your disastrous Three Waters proposal to give control of ratepayer-funded water infrastructure and services to the Maori tribal elite. Communities up and down the country are outraged at this blatant seizing of local assets – and the transfer of democratic control that will undoubtedly lead to the imposition of royalties to Maori whenever a Kiwi tap is turned on.

And what about your plan to silence opponents through proposed hate speech laws? You did not seek a mandate to ‘criminalise’ someone for political views – such as criticising Labour politicians or Maori supremacists – yet that is what your draft law changes are proposing.

Nor did you seek a mandate to effectively buy media support for your plan for tribal rule. You campaigned on funding the media, but you did not explain that the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund would be contingent on supporting the fabricated Maori ‘partnership’ claim that underpins He Puapua. In some countries, political leaders who attempt to unduly influence the media through taxpayer funding, are being accused of corruption.

What hold does the tribal elite have over you? Why are you prepared to sacrifice the democratic rights of all New Zealanders, so they can have power? Kind people may think that you are simply naive and being duped by your Maori caucus. Others believe that creating disunity is part of your socialist DNA.

When it comes to your management of Covid, we are now witnessing the loss of liberty on a scale unimaginable from a New Zealand Prime Minister.

You have given yourself the authority to control our lives, even to the point of allowing police – or their ‘agents’ – to enter our homes and businesses without a warrant.

Now, through vaccine mandates – that you promised before the election you would not introduce – you are dividing our nation and trampling over sacred civil liberties and democratic rights protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights.

In 1990, when Labour Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer was introducing the Bill of Rights in Parliament, he explained that it was a safeguard to protect New Zealanders against the unbridled power of future governments: “It is unlikely that there will be a wholesale disregard of human rights in New Zealand in the  foreseeable future, but… we cannot afford to wait until rights disappear before we take action, because it is too late by that stage. It is better to have a Bill of Rights when it is not needed than to not have one when it is needed.”

Now, thirty-one years later, you are leading a government that is doing exactly what he believed would never happen in New Zealand – you are stomping on the basic human rights of New Zealanders.

This is not the New Zealand way – and it is not what voters thought they were getting when they gave you the responsibility of leading our country for the benefit of all.

You have betrayed us, and we have lost trust in you and your Government.

That’s why we don’t love you anymore, Jacinda – and why we want you to resign.

Yours sincerely…

So, what can be done?

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is UK based Mark Hanson, a New Zealander with a legal background and vast international experience, who is so deeply troubled by the destructive socialist agenda he sees being rolled out, that he has proposed a new type of law:

“New Zealand faces a major challenge to the future of its democracy which it has never experienced since the coming to power of the current Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern, who comes from a communist, socialist and dictatorial background, has changed the history of New Zealand by closing down both the economy and Parliament with the excuse of Covid.

“By the time the next election comes along in 2023, it is expected that a number of ‘power-sharing’ laws will have been passed by the Ardern Government, that will change the nature of New Zealand democracy forever…

“There are two democratic ways of dealing with this. First, is to draw up a list of amendments to every relevant law or regulation in need of repealing. This however, would take years to achieve and would not restore democracy on a timely basis.

“Secondly, the most time efficient and democratic approach is to draw up one Repealing Act of Parliament to repeal every law and regulation she has enacted, before the next election. In addition, all persons who have been appointed under laws and regulations should be removed from office the day the repealing legislation is passed into law.”

Mark’s suggestion is powerful.

After three years of Jacinda Ardern’s destructive agenda the immediate repeal of their unmandated and undemocratic law changes by the next government is imperative.

Will opposition parties – including National and ACT – pledge to repeal these damaging law changes when they become government?

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Dr Muriel Newman

Dr Muriel Newman established the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. A former Chamber of Commerce President, her background is in business and education.