Cam Slater: Has She Run Out of Schools to Visit?

Desperation makes people do strange things. Jacinda Ardern must be really desperate now, after a series of polls that clearly show we are done with her and her party of clowns, buffoons, racists and chancers. She’s going to do that which she has steadfastly refused to do for quite some time: meet Groundswell:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will meet with the leaders of Groundswell NZ next week, a year after saying she would not meet with them.

Derek Mackie: Jacinda's new "progressive" Bill of Rights

Jacinda's diary  -  26 Sep 2022

My recent speech at the UN on the dangers of mis and disinformation was truly momentous. 

It shone a spotlight on the dire threat free speech and opinion poses - as “weapons of war” no less - to the safety and security of my New World Order. 

 It was received by my adoring fans with the same zeal and reverence as God bestowing the ten commandments on Moses. Or perhaps, more appropriately, Lenin presenting the Communist Manifesto to the Soviet Union’s General Assembly just after the Russian Revolution and the bloody, but necessary, assassination of the Tzar….and his imperial family. 

 In light of the effusive praise and positive feedback I received from virtually all the Western mainstream media, and my dear elite socialist colleagues, I’ve decided to lead by example and forge the way to a brighter, more inclusive neo-Marxist future by “modernising” the NZ Bill of Rights Act. 

Garrick Tremain: Doctor Sharma

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on the eternal source of all truth! 

Point of Order: NZ Herald regards NZ and China as allies – but this doesn’t gel with the PM saying our allegiances are with like-minded countries

“Nothing like a trip abroad to put a spring in the PM’s step” – or so said the sub-heading on a report in the NZ Herald on Saturday of Jacinda Ardern’s visit to the United States, a visit which by most accounts was successful in its primary aim of reviving contacts with both political and business leaders.

Political editor Claire Trevett put it aptly:

“NZ was looking for new growth in its relationship with the US after the pause of the Trump era”.

New Zealanders, too, were chuffed at the success of the PM’s mission, her popularity with the Americans she met, and especially her chat with President Joe Biden. The applause she won for her address at Harvard University in itself was remarkable, and probably stimulated Trevett to note that:

Denis Hall: I have left this till now - In the hope someone else would speak up

Look at her expression. She cannot hide her smug.

And there's this!

On May 26 2022 - our esteemed Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern went to Harvard University in the USA to receive an Honouree Doctorate of something or other. They plonked a fancy hat on her head that was representative of that honour - and the coveted robes of office were ceremoniously placed around her shoulders.



Everyone cheered. Yaaaaay!

Garrick Tremain: At the Dental Convention

Jacinda and Willy, topic of the day at the Dental Convention

Ani O'Brien: Time to end decades of continuity

This week Simon Bridges walked away from politics - well from the parliamentary kind anyway. He will, in my opinion, be the one who got away. The one with all the makings of an excellent Prime Minister, but for whom luck was simply not on his side.

The chaos of the Muller coup that dethroned Bridges from National Party leadership, despite the party polling higher than the Government, is ultimately responsible for depriving New Zealand of an intelligent Māori Prime Minister who saw power as the means to achieve his vision for a better New Zealand rather than power for power’s sake.

In his valedictory speech this week, Simon Bridges sent a clear message to the colleagues he leaves behind:

"You were elected for your values, principles, character, and judgments, and to be bold in pursuit of them."

Garrick Tremain: Awards

 Garrick Tremain on the Robert Mugabe awards.

Geoffrey Miller: Jacinda Ardern continues to forge a more US-friendly foreign policy

Jacinda Ardern is slowly but surely shifting New Zealand’s foreign policy towards the West.

That was the underlying theme of a keynote address by New Zealand’s Prime Minister this week.

Ardern mentioned China only once by name when she spoke to the US business summit in Auckland on Monday, but Beijing was clearly on her mind throughout the 3000-word address.

Some of the hardest-hitting passages came early in the speech and appeared deliberately indirect and oblique, leaving it up to listeners to make up their own minds on the intended likely target of the PM’s words.

Bryce Edwards: Why Labour won’t introduce a radical wealth tax

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been perceived as “softening her line on wealth taxes” – and therefore being open to the introduction of a new type of progressive taxation on the rich. This was the description published yesterday by leftwing wealth researcher Max Rashbrooke, who was reporting on the fact that Ardern would not rule out introducing a wealth tax when interviewed on breakfast TV.

His interpretation was shared by many on the political right, who also stated that Ardern and Labour were obviously considering a new tax on assets. This then led to a lot of excitement on all sides about an alleged U-turn or broken promise on Ardern’s stated disavow that she would ever introduce such a policy.

Wishful thinking by left and right

Graham Adams: Three Waters looks like the government’s suicide note

It has been widely noted that Jacinda Ardern didn’t appear at Friday’s media conference in Porirua to announce that the government would press on with its deeply unpopular Three Waters programme — albeit with a few minor adjustments.

The task of presenting the government’s response to a working group’s recommendations was left to Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Grant Robertson, wearing his hat as Minister for Infrastructure.

As Newstalk ZB’s political correspondent Aaron Dahmen reported: "Interesting to note that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is taking a week off after her Singapore / Japan trip but if she wanted to be here [at the Three Waters announcement], she would be."

Host Kerre Woodham responded with a derisive laugh: "Ah, she was never going to be there!"

But why would the Prime Minister have interrupted her holiday to attend? The scheme toforcibly transfer the water assets of the nation’s 67 councils to four vast regional entities — while giving 50 per cent governance over infrastructure, paid for by generations of ratepayers, to unelected iwi members — is so disliked it could well be her Waterloo.

Bryce Edwards: Could inflation lead to a voter backlash?

The current cost of living crisis in the New Zealand economy could yet have severe political consequences. Warning signs could be seen in Monday’s French presidential election result – in which the nationalist-populist Marine Le Pen upset the status quo by getting through to the second round and winning an incredible 42 per cent of the vote.

Rather than being a vote for her nationalism or rightwing politics, Le Pen’s stunning result was due to a campaign that targeted France’s cost of living crisis. Le Pen was able to leverage huge anger amongst those disadvantaged by quickly rising inflation and other assaults on ordinary people’s standard of living. Polling shows that Le Pen won the support of workers and those on low incomes, while the incumbent Emmanuel Macron won the votes of managers, professionals and the wealthy.

Could a similar revolt against Jacinda Ardern’s government happen here?

Point of Order: You thought voting rights and representation was a governance matter? Get to grips with the Treaty and sophistication

We were alerted by David Farrar to the further crumbling of local government democracy under the Ardern Government – or, as she would put it, to making our governance arrangements more sophisticated.

The outrage – or sophistication , depending on your ideology – goes further than Farrar reported in a post headed Parliament votes to end “one person, one vote” (although some of his readers picked up on it).

Yes, the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill abandons the key constitutional concept that all Kiwis have the same voting rights.

But check out how the government opted to deal with legislation which prescribes how the people of Rotorua will be able to vote and how their council will be structured. It is being treated as a Maori Affairs issue, not a local government issue.