John McLean: Sabotage?!

Did the departing Labour Government try to burn down the house?

Don your tinfoil hat. Let’s explore the unspeakable possibility that, once it realised it would lose power, the last Labour Government conspired to sabotage New Zealand, economically and societally. As preposterous as it sounds, there’s realpolitik logic to this proposition; if the current parlous state of the New Zealand nation persists until the next election, it’s predictable that a desperate and despondent Aotearoan populace will elect a Labour/Greens/Māori Party coalition to govern in 2026.

The complexity inherent in this exploration is that Labour and its administration were so childishly incompetent that it would be easy and tempting to construe sheer uselessness as sabotage. But neither should we be under any illusions. Jacinda Ardern was provably not averse to abusing her position as Prime Minister and damaging the country she was supposed to be governing in order to aggrandize herself on the world stage.

Ardern’s decision to end oil and gas exploration – specifically designed to paint herself as a global champion of Climate Change mitigation - has contributed significantly to New Zealand’s current power crisis and crippling electricity prices.

Earlier, in December 2020, the Right Dishonorable Ardern had declared a “climate emergency” and committed New Zealand to a course that, on current settings, will require New Zealand to pay over NZD20 billion for carbon credits before 2030 – credits that will make not the slightest difference to the climate, in New Zealand or anywhere else. The Queen of Kindness Cures Climate Change! Furthermore, Ardern’s successor Chris Hipkins is a bitter, lost and potentially nihilistic little man (not only because his wife ran off with another human of a sex that Hipkins can’t seem to define).

By way of final preliminaries, we should record that Labour - as members of the Radical Identitarian Left - are no particular fans of the nation state or democracy and its institutions, so instinctively don’t much care for the current New Zealand Democracy. They’re Comintern Globalists.

By when was Labour toast?

Albeit with the wisdom of hindsight, by April 2022 (18 months out from the last general election) it was more likely than not that Labour was going to lose power at that election. By April 2023, it was virtually certain that Labour’s term in power was going to end – according to the reputable polls. Support for NZ First took off in April 2023.

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So, what sort of damaging things did Labour do in the six months or so leading up to their election defeat? Things that might indicate sabotage. Let’s pick a couple.

Three Waters

On 23 August 2023, under Parliamentary “urgency”, Labour passed the so-called “Three Waters” legislation. For those who may have been living under a rock, that was the legislation touted by Labour as a means to better manage New Zealand’s drinking, waste and storm water, but which was really an attempt by Labour (driven by its thuggish and underhand Māori caucus) to hand control of such water to an unelected Maori elite.

By that 23 August 2023 date - within 2 months of the fixed 14 October 2023 election date – it was apparent from all opinion polls that it was all over red rover for Labour. Student Politics on Steroids was about to end. In March 2023, National had announced that, if elected, it would repeal Three Waters. But Labour, with a frightful ideologically-driven F YOU, passed the legislation anyway. And it was even worse than that. Labour was ruling be decree, commanding supplicant local governments to implement Three Waters before the legislation was even passed.

As early as January 2023, Labour had already appointed chief executives for the Three Waters Entities. They included Vaughan Payne, a handsome and preposterous grifter who has managed to hoover up vast amounts of public money without doing a skerrick of work. Having made a menace of himself at the farcically dysfunctional “Te Pukenga” (an attempt at a national body to rule all Polytechs), on an annual salary of almost $400,000 and having grabbed a redundancy payment of $100,000, Vaughan moved to a Three Waters chief executive role with a base salary of $710,000.

In December 2023, after the new coalition government had formally resolved to repeal Three Waters, the Department of Internal Affairs popped Vaughan into a “regional establishment director” role for…Three Waters…the very regime that the Coalition had resolved to repeal – on a 30 month fixed term contract with an annual salary of over $300,000. That’s Vaughan on the right, with Austin Powers on the left (and a Top Twin in the middle).

Labour committed over $1 billion to Three Waters, much of that money being squandered well after it had become a fait accompli that Three Waters would be scrapped. Does that reek of economic sabotage to you?

Waitangi Tribunal

Under its legislation, the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal is a recommendatory body. Its formal statutory tasks are inquire into, and report to the Government on, claims of Māori land confiscations/dodgy deals and Crown policies or practices or proposed legislation that are alleged to breach the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Unfortunately however, the Waitangi Tribunal has re-created itself as a grotesque three-headed Court/Legislature/Star Chamber.

In April 2024, the Tribunal tried to summon and harass Children’s Minister Karen Chhour over the Government’s decision to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act (that’s the section which prioritizes the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi - whatever they may be - over the safety and welfare of Māori children).

The Tribunal’s latest over-reach is its report urging the Government to scrap the ACT Party’s proposed “Treaty Principles Bill”. The unlawful antics here are two-old. First, the Tribunal’s jurisdiction to consider whether proposed legislation is contrary to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi only applies once the proposed legislation has actually been drafted (and there is currently no draft Treaty Principles Bill). Secondly, the Tribunal can only examine proposed legislation if the legislation has been referred to the Tribunal by Parliamentary vote – and there has of course been no such vote.

We therefore have a renegade, extreme-activist Waitangi Tribunal operating well outside of its statutory remit. Furthermore, it’s not at all clear that our activist Supreme Court would support any Court action to rein the Tribunal in, or that our highest judges wouldn’t circumscribe Parliamentary sovereignty in favour of the Waitangi Tribunal. Be under no illusion, the Waitangi Tribunal’s clear aim is to hack New Zealand into two separate nations, one for people with Maori ancestors and another for all the rest. In truth, the Waitangi Tribunal is now operating primarily as a pseudo-intellectual lobby group for the Maori Party (Te Pati Maori).

Is there any evidence of Labour-led sabotage here? Well…yes.

On 1 September 2023, the Labour Government (Nanaia Mahuta…remember her?) appointed Caren Fox as the chair (head) of the Waitangi Tribunal. A bit earlier, on 5 July 2023, Dullard Governor General Cindy Kiro had appointed Fox as the Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court.

Therefore, in the immediate lead-up to its impending electoral demise, Labour elevated Caren Fox to positions that make her probably New Zealand’s most powerful and dangerous Māori activist. Caren has never really practiced law. She’s lectured at Victoria and Waikato universities. Her legal PhD was on the “Ngāti Porou legal system” (whatever that could possibly be). She’s dedicated to the destruction of New Zealand in its existing constitutional form, dividing New Zealand along racial lines and conferring preferential civic and political rights on people with Maori ancestry.

There’s therefore compelling evidence that the Labour Government, in its death throws, appointed a person dedicated to sabotaging New Zealand into positions helping her to do just that.

Fox was not the only subversive and seditious appointment that Labour made to the Waitangi Tribunal.

On 31 March 2023, Labour appointed David Williams to the Waitangi Tribunal. Radical and insipid in equal measures, Williams is living proof of just how distasteful Wokery can be when exhibited by over-70s men. Williams smiles a lot and can appear benign. But make no mistake. He epitomizes that odd combo of self-congratulations and self-loathing so often found in White Woke Folk. And in his advanced dotage he’s desperate to do his bit to create ethno-State Aotearoa.

So, can we conclude for sure that Labour in its death throes tried to sabotage New Zealand? Perhaps not. But the fact we can legitimately debate whether there was sabotage demonstrates just how damaging Labour became after it entered the exit lounge.

There’s a semantic aspect to this. In order to meet the definition of sabotage, the destruction has to be deliberate. Could Labour have been deranged enough to genuinely think that, by wrecking the economy and trying to carve up New Zealand along racial lines, it was actually doing long term good? i.e. in the Marxist mantra, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. In George Orwell’s words… “But where’s the omelet?”

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced.