John McLean: Clark Foul Play

A play called Helen Clark in Six Outfits is currently being performed at Auckland’s Waterfront Theatre. The play is about ex-Prime Minister and current de facto Labour Party leader, Helen Clark. The real Helen Clark attended the official opening night on 9 April. Radio New Zealand host Jesse Mulligan interviewed Clark, at the venue, after the performance.

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The play is being presented by the Auckland Theatre Company. Tickets are cheap. The best seats are selling for less than $100. Most are much cheaper. Apart from ticket sales, the play is otherwise entirely funded by New Zealanders who are taxpayers (i.e., the Government) and/or gamblers (Lotto “players”). They fund Creative New Zealand, which funds the Auckland Theatre Company, which funds the play. Simple.

And also astonishing, given Helen Clark in Six Outfits is proudly pro-Labour propaganda and there are about six months until the next general election.

Creative New Zealand currently receives $17 million each year directly from the Government (i.e. taxpayers) and $53m annually from the NZ Lotteries Grants Board – that’s New Zealand’s State-run gambling monopoly that takes money from people who can’t afford it and gives it to people who don’t deserve it.

Creative New Zealand is a farcically Leftist, post-modernist, racialized outfit. According to its website, “Our vision is that the arts and ngā toi Māori [Māori arts and crafts] are flourishing”. Creative NZ’s Council is an absolute hot bed of Critical Race Theorists and Cultural Elite Karens:

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In their defence, Critical Social Justice is embedded in Creative NZ’s legislation, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Act 2014. Under that legislation, “all persons performing functions or exercising powers under [Creative NZ] must… recognise the cultural diversity of the people of New Zealand [except, presumably, Pakehas who don’t wear tikis]; and… the role of Māori as tangata whenua”. The legislation expressly requires the following:

• “At least 4 of the persons appointed as members of the Arts Council must be persons who, in the opinion of the Minister, after consultation with the Minister of Māori Affairs, are qualified for appointment, having regard to their knowledge of—

• te ao Māori (Māori world view); and

• tikanga Māori (Māori protocol and culture); and

• Māori arts.

• At least 2 of the persons appointed as members of the Arts Council must be persons who, in the opinion of the Minister after consultation with the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, are qualified by their knowledge of the arts and of the traditions or cultures of the Pacific Island peoples of New Zealand.”

There’s nothing in Creative NZ’s legislation that expressly requires it to fund pro-Labour Party propaganda. But by the same token, there’s nothing (outside of legislative reform) that the current Government can do about Creative NZ funding its Luvies, because the Act express provides, “The Minister may not give a direction to the Arts Council [Creative NZ] in relation to cultural matters”.

And in truth, none of this should come as a surprise. Government-funded NZ On Air has funded, with hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money, two films, in consecutive years (2020 and 2021), about Crazy Greens Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. With yet another Chlöe movie in the publicly-funded pipeline.

Helen Clark in Six Outfits is not a concert, but there’s concerted effort. We have Creative TV working with Helen Clark and Radio New Zealand (represented by Jesse Mulligan) to produce pro-Labour agitprop, all in an election year.

Immediately after the well-orchestrated opening, Red Radio NZ glowingly reported:

After the opening night of Helen Clark in Six Outfits, Clark took to the stage for an interview with Jesse Mulligan and the audience erupted in cheers and applause.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” she said. “I love theatre, and so I said to people, I don’t expect it to be a hagiography, but I don’t expect it to be a hatchet job either.”

Of course, Aunty Helen didn’t remotely expect a hatchet job and got exactly what she’d arranged – pure hagiography.

The whole premise of Helen Clark in Six Outfits is bizarre gaslighting. Because the Labour Leader ain’t exactly a model of sartorial elegance or fashion fashionista. In reality, Clark is a person devoid of aesthetic appreciation who typically dresses (never in a dress) as a dowdy frump.

Who plays Helen, in this pantomime? Look no further than Leftist Thespian and pretend Māori, Jennifer “Te Atamira” Ward-Lealand.

Jennifer claims to have been gifted “Te Atamira” (“the stage” in English, apparently) in 2017, by Sir Tīmoti Kāretu and the late Professor Te Wharehuia Milroy, because she speaks some Māori.

The other woman who plays Clark, and who is now suffering Te Atamira’s insufferable ego on a nightly basis, is a no-name actress by the name of Lauren Gibson.

What Helen Clark in Six Outfits certainly doesn’t cover is Helen’s transformation into a useful idiot for Islamists and decent into antisemitism, of which she is rather proud. This pic, from her carefully curated Wikipedia:

Neither, of course, does the play touch on Helen’s androgyny or marriage to anti-Semite husband, Peter Davis, who after the barbarous 7 October 2023 Palestinian attack on Israeli civilians posted on social media “You reap what you sow.”

What can we make of all this? Most alarmingly (or perhaps not), Helen Clark in Six Outfits is what happens when a Government that has now been in power for two-and-a-half years – with absolute legislative power - continues to tolerate the tsunami of public money being squandered on anti-Government propaganda. It’s a form of self-inflicted harm, or wilful blindness, or…something.

Whatever the case, the current Government’s intolerable tolerance of vast sums of public (TAXPAYERS’) money being used to propagandize for New Zealand’s political opposition could cost the Government power at the next election.

Meanwhile, the Judicial Conduct Committee addressing Judge Ema Aitken’s contumelious conduct towards the New Zealand First political party, at Auckland’s Northern Club, has just given her a free pass to continue as a judge.

NEW ZEALAND JUDICIARY CONTINUES TO CIRCLE THE WAGONS
John McLean  2 March 2025

In November 2024, District Court Judge “Ema” Aitken, her former-doctor husband David Galler and King’s Counsel Michael Reed KC gate-crashed a private function at Auckland city’s Northern Club. The function was a Christmas get together of the New Zealand First political party. Aitken’s real name is Elizabeth Margaret Aitken. “Ema” appears to be a truncat…
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After the incident, the real Helen Clark naturally weighed in, asserting on her social media that Aitken is “an excellent judge”. The Fabians have a great ground game.

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