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Monday, January 23, 2023

Alistair Boyce: Let's Just Call it Like it Is...


There should be no celebration.

There should be an overwhelming sense of relief.

Jacinda Ardern has done the right thing by herself, her family and finally the people of New Zealand.

In just over a year, we have witnessed the disintegration of a leader whose 2020 tenure of absolute electoral driven power started with overwhelming public support, gratitude and reverence but descended into a myopic and confused authoritarian rule. We have graphically endured a lesson of incoherent government and state overreach which has been on a march of portentous marginalisation through the private sector. It has elevated a ballooning and unproductive state sector of ‘bourgeois’ excess.

The descent to implosion started with the alienation of the vulnerable rural poor, sole traders, the unvaccinated, small business and economic sectors that could not adjust to lockdowns and the downstream consequences of dislocation. Then bewilderingly the whole rural sector was signalled as the primary target of climate change ideology that was more like an atheistic religious purge. This however was only ‘opium’ to the urban green economic activists in a Wellington bubble. Not content with this tirade of totalitarianism and messing with the means of production the Labour government drove the ‘out of control’ train of 3 waters, a dual racially divided health system and the continued and extending legislative requirements of ethnic consultation. Indigenous elites can increasingly demand influence and potentially equity before any progressive economic or environmental change can occur. This is effectively David Seymour’s ‘ethno state’ with elites’ power of veto and no provision for ‘trickle down’ to its own marginalised people. The structure is elitest and tribal. This is opposed in its very nature to ‘western’ democratically structured governance with potential equitable redistribution of wealth (i.e. Democratic socialism in action).

This Labour government have significantly eroded the NZ democracy and its sovereignty by caving into an apologist academic elite whose catch cry is to blame all society’s ills on the effects of post colonialism without acknowledging economic, social and political progression and benefits. The prevailing Treaty of Waitangi analysis is opportunistic as opposed to realistic.

Indeed, under this Labour Government the rich and propertied have prospered while by any measure the disadvantaged pains have dramatically increased. Buying a house for most socio-economic demographics is now an impossible dream. The egalitarian socialist democratic ideal has been replaced by a new totalitarianism where ethnic and economic elites prosper, the state sector is elevated in a new realm of ‘woke’ privilege and the disadvantaged now have no hope or aspiration to climb out of the mire of socio-economic depravity. Lawlessness is endemic, on the rise and set to remain, becoming the next government’s problem.

Government led inflation, the excesses of Covid response with ‘Quantitative Easing’/money printing and myopic immigration policy has further conflated the dilemma of a confused incoherent government. It sees no hope of re-election and impossible choices of back track especially in relation to co-governance or more accurately the acquiescence of power to an ‘ethno’ economic and political elite. Any balanced debate of ‘co-governance’ has been actively stifled through control of the messaging through mainstream media by NZ on AIR and the State Journalism fund to the point where mainstream media business models are no longer sustainable without government funding. Any alternative view or debate on the government led version of co-governance is ridiculously labelled as racism. Most New Zealanders under 30 and substantial other socio-demographic segments no longer trust the simplistic homogeneity of mainstream pro co-governance ‘propaganda’.

The people are not fooled and were never consulted in the 2020 election campaign on the radical policies to come. Consequently large, marginalised segments turned into an active fifth column which proceeded to personalise, taunt and harass the government and in particular the leader responsible. Mainstream media analysis is missing the point. The reaction of the people is an effect of the cause, a betrayal by state sponsored totalitarianism, and they have been marginalised in greater numbers than arguably any NZ constituency ever before. It was a battle of wills. Jacinda Ardern was faced with the impossibility of taking the blame and directing a recourse going against both ethnic and academic elites and still losing an acrimonious and unforgiving election. The PM raised the white flag choosing to leave the field of battle than capitulate in a spiteful and vicious public election campaign.

Now Chris Hipkins inherits the battle and the impossible plan without a compliant and grateful mandate, but still with the power of absolute government. Without political restraint and in the absence of strong and coherent leadership, unrestrained power has been a poisoned chalice for Labour. How Hipkins deals with the Maori caucus and co-governance not only in practice but through the power of the state will determine the fate of Labour and himself. A double down on existing policy will result in an acrimonious division of NZ society and electoral annihilation. The choices of restrained continuance or a ‘cup of tea’ with a modified agenda probably won’t be enough to win the election but it might prevent a 4-term government tenure of the centre right. Chris Hipkins is in an invidious position that requires a strength of resolve reminiscent of when Helen Clarke rejected the foreshore and seabed legislation that led to the Maori caucus split and the creation of the Maori party. Clarke’s strong leadership allowed Labour to retain its egalitarian identity and fight another day.

Chris Hipkins occupies centre stage and has only eight months to rationalise and control the Jacinda juggernaut. It appears the dangerous and impossible experiment is over and unwittingly, naturally market led Liberal Democracy is winning the battle, reverting it to a skirmish and hopefully avoiding a damaging and unwinnable social war.

The likelihood is Chris Hipkins will hang on uncomfortably until October 14, fighting fires. Hipkins will get burnt like Labour leaders before him. Being a boy from the Hutt with another ‘westie’ (no matter how diverse) for deputy will not save him, as Grant Robertson could probably predict. That story could be breaking news and will wait for another day. In the meantime, Robertson has carefully removed himself and the economic equation from the immediate reckoning leaving the new PM the poisoned chalice and nowhere to run.

The lasting legacy will hopefully be a nonapologetic restrengthening and re-correction of an effective, equitable and democratic policy framework based in proven Western Liberal Democratic traditions. An ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’ that might help working kiwis, the disadvantaged in equal measure and small business get through the imminent recession, believing a better future is to come. But for the near future that will be in the hands of Hipkins, Robertson and the dynamic of direct democratic power…hold on to your seats, it will be a wild ride!  

Alistair Boyce is the owner of the iconic Wellington pub the Backbencher. 

10 comments:

Robert Arthur said...

MPs spend so much time honing their images one wonders just how much they understand of the basics. A few years ago Ardern was caught out in public when incredibly she could not summarise the clauses of the Treaty (I think it was Willie otr Tamahere who provided her with the words. Like all maori activists with a focussed gaol, had the themes off by heart.)
Absolutely unbelievably, on the news 23rd seems Hipkins has failed the same test. When politicians routinely mouth about the Principles I wonder what they imagine. I wonder if they have read any of the several histories, books on the Treaty etc. Presumably they never get around to Tross Publishing.

Anonymous said...

Totally agree, keep the bubbly in the fridge until all remnants of this govt. are queuing outside W&I looking for a real job.

Rob Beechey said...

The most honest dissection of this authoritarian rule that I have read over the last few days. Our Marxist leader’s ideological tyranny has been mischievously interpreted by the State controlled media for the gullible. And NZ has its fair share of gullibility. . Her flagrant misdeeds and secretive manoeuvres have found her out. It wasn’t that her tank was empty it was that the polls chose not to follow her demand for obedience.

DeeM said...

"Mainstream media analysis is missing the point. The reaction of the people is an effect of the cause, a betrayal by state sponsored totalitarianism, and they have been marginalised in greater numbers than arguably any NZ constituency ever before."

Absolutely.

Cries of misogyny and regulation of public discourse from Helen Clarke and Jenny Shipley show they are part of the problem. This has nothing to do with that.
It's simply a convenient but lame excuse for an incompetent, ideological leader who misled the public then threatened them with the power of the state, all behind the facade of hypocritical kindness and caring.

The reason Ardern drew such an extreme reaction from a large sector of the public was all her own making.
When you set out to brainwash the population then throttle public debate and free speech things get nasty.
Ardern crumbled when criticism got too much. She was a neo-Marxist dreamer who never should have been PM.

Good riddance. I give Hipkins a less than 5% chance of winning the next election. And only if he immediately scraps Three Waters, the TVNZ/RNZ merger, all pro-Maori policies and....cancels the fuel excise duty due to go back on in March.

Realistically, he'll probably only manage the last item.

Now it's time to start working on National who are a pretty sorry excuse for a centre-right opposition party.

Anonymous said...


A bleak landscape - and frightening for NZ's democracy.

Now the true decency and resilience of New Zealanders is required - and must prevail. Failure is not an option.

Anonymous said...

I have noticed that many stories in MSM since New Year are referring to only New Zealand. Not even Aotearoa New Zealand.
Perhaps we are starting to turn a corner as the politicians are finally hearing the message that we don't necessarily want to all pretend to be Maori. Or are that interested in having Te Reo force fed to us. I have heard so many people say that they used to love the haka but now they can't stand it. I find that very sad. I also know many who don't watch TV or listen to RNZ any more and that's me too.
MC

Anonymous said...

Correct. Remember it was this clown who suggested making aucklanders apply to get a time slot to cross the akl border during covid!!. All for a bug we all got anyway. They should never be allowed this power again.Talk about totalitarian leanings and he has it. He is just as bad as her. Lest we forget

Clive Bibby said...

Well done Alistair
Arguably the most accurate commentary on why this country is in such a mess.
However, it is no surprise that these incisive words come from a businessman working at the coalface - albeit one where he gets to face the perpetrators of this betrayal up close and personal.
I would hate to think what those like me would do if we found ourselves in the same situation.
The words l should use to describe provincial New Zealand’s likely response to such an unlikely encounter would have me in trouble with the hate speech merchants but nonetheless they would be the truth - something in short supply during the last six years
We are hopeful of better times ahead.

Anonymous said...

Sadly not enough people will read this excellent article

Mark said...

Great analysis of the NZ landscape. However most of our politicians are globalists.They have tied us to agenda 2030 and the upcoming pandemic treaty and God knows what else.Anything any of these traitors do will conform to UN and it's stakeholder wishes

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