Michael Bassett: Shane Jones deserves support about Waitangi Tribunal

Shane Jones deserves full support for his round-arm swing at the Waitangi Tribunal which is now fiddling about with a constitutional inquiry and deciding who can take part in it. A clause in New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with the National Party commits the government to amending the Waitangi Tribunal’s legislation so that the body refocuses the scope, purpose and the nature of its inquiries back to the original intent of the legislation it operates under.

Michael Bassett: TV One's beat-up on the Treaty and the King's hui

Last Friday night, TV One’s lead item on the 6pm news was a story by reporter Te Aniwa Hurihanganui. She had scored a leaked piece of advice not yet considered by Cabinet that was intended to warn ministers in the new government that they would run into trouble with Maori if they backed David Seymour’s planned legislation to define in law the oft-mentioned principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Coming the day before a major hui at Ngaruawahia called by King Tuheitia, Te Aniwa was intent on maximising irritation among Maori about the new government’s Maori policy.

Michael Bassett: Child and teen-age criminal offending

Have you noticed what an extraordinary number of children and teenagers have lately been pinching cars, fleeing police, driving the wrong way down motorway exits, and having to be tracked by the Police Eagle helicopter? They are almost always caught. Most seem to be south or west Aucklanders, although Hamilton and Christchurch have had their share. When arrested and charged, we seldom these days find out their names. Of recent times, name suppression seems to be being used to disguise the fact that all-too-many of the offenders are from our most-favoured racial group to which Jacinda’s and Chippy’s governments awarded special privileges.

Michael Bassett: The silly season and Auckland

When the news is restricted to beaches, roads, and swimming accidents there is always an opportunity for some fantasist to air an idea. The most recent example is the call for a new sunken stadium on Auckland’s waterfront. It’s an idea that has surfaced from time to time in the past, starting in 2006 when Helen Clark’s government tried hard to shift the principal venue for the 2011 Rugby World Cup from Eden Park to downtown. The idea collapsed, and a considerable sum of public money was invested instead in Eden Park. It is a name synonymous with New Zealand Rugby, and to be found in several rugby-loving towns around the world. I remember staying in a French pub in La Rochelle where the public bar was named “Eden Park” and was covered in bits of rugby memorabilia belonging to the Kiwi-loving owner.

Michael Bassett: Who needs Chippy when we have the Herald?

In case you are in any doubt, the New Zealand Herald, with TV1 in hot pursuit, has taken over the role of being the Labour-inspired Opposition to the new government. Chippy and Toni can take a holiday until the low-level editorial team at the Herald come to their senses, or the paper collapses.

Michael Bassett: TV One journalists fail to notice there's a new government

As we already know, adjusting to the arrival of new leaders in the Beehive is proving difficult for the Mainstream Media (MSM). Many journalists seem not to have noticed that the public voted for change. They need to recognise this fact. I suspect the problem might be with the journalists’ education.

Michael Bassett: Modern Maori myths

Many of the comments about the Coalition’s determination to wind back the dramatic Maorification of New Zealand of the last three years would have you believe the new government is engaged in a full-scale attack on Maori. In reality, all that is really happening is that ministers are stopping the crusade waged by the Ardern/Hipkins government to push Maori into all aspects of our lives at the expense of every other culture, while never having mentioned an intention to do so during the 2020 election campaign.

Michael Bassett: A new Ministry - at last

Like most people, I was getting heartily sick of all the time being wasted over the coalition negotiations. During the first three weeks Winston grinned like a Cheshire cat, certain he’d be needed; Chris Luxon wasted time in lifting the phone to Winston and, still in campaign mode, visited the Chelsea Sugar Works rather than cementing his numbers in place. Even in the weeks after the final results it took time before the leading trio seemed to be in purposeful mode.

But then came the announcement on Friday 24 November, forty days after the election. A credible ministry with one or two over-burdened ministers, and two separate agreements, one with ACT, the other with New Zealand First, each of them is worthy of careful analysis.

Michael Bassett: New Zealand's modern cultural cringe

Yesterday Graham Adams' column referred to Michael Bassett's now 'infamous' piece which earned him a lifetime ban from the NZ Herald. So we thought we'd give it another whirl!

A bizarre craze seems to be sweeping New Zealand right now. All things derived from Europe except our creature comforts must be set aside as we are expected to embrace all things Maori. It’s racism on a grand scale.

Graham Adams: Wakey, wakey, mainstream media!

The rise of independent media challenges journalism’s staid bastions.

Last week Newsroom’s political editor, Jo Moir, seemed surprised to discover that co-governance and its various policy manifestations aren’t popular.

On X — the social media site still known to everyone as Twitter — she wrote: "Exclusive poll! Okay, Newsroom hasn’t entered the poll race, but we do have fascinating new data from Talbot Mills showing more people surveyed opposed Māori wards, co-governance and the Māori Health Authority than supported them.”

Michael Bassett: The 2023 election in retrospect

Our finally completed election results need to be viewed on several levels. On the surface, the change of government was caused because Jacinda Ardern’s and Chris Hipkins’ Labour ministries were weak in personnel and unable to extract even respectable performance from the current feeble bureaucracy when dealing with bread and butter issues.

Michael Bassett: Hallelujah - First steps of progress at last

Some kind of deliverance is at hand. The worst government of my long life is off to the knackers’ yard, along with several MPs who played a key role in its demise. National and Act look like they can cobble together a working arrangement before the final count tells them whether New Zealand First will be needed in more than a support-party role.

Michael Bassett: Hapless Hipkins and his racism

Without so much as batting an eyelid, Chris Hipkins told an audience on Saturday that there had been “more racism” in this election campaign than ever before. And he blamed it on the opposition parties, National, Act and New Zealand First. In those statements he indicated his unworthiness to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that whatever racism has been apparent during this 2023 campaign stems directly from the racist crusade the Labour ministry embarked on immediately after the 2020 election.

Michael Bassett: Why can't our journalists do their jobs?

As the probability that National and Act will win the election grows stronger every day the left is going berserk. Not content with making new spending promises everywhere he goes, Chris Hipkins has taken to absurd allegations about his opponents’ policies. Even after Christopher Luxon had told us all in the Leaders’ Debate that National supported school lunches, Hipkins whose hearing must be deficient, claimed that they were in danger of being scrapped if National won. Labour looks and sounds desperate, a state that never inspires confidence.

Michael Bassett: Our media still don't get it

If Labour ministers and our left-leaning media knew more about New Zealand’s political history they would stop giving so much publicity to National’s tax-cut plans, ill-advised though they might be. The attacks are only increasing the likelihood that National will be elected. In one celebrated election, 1928, the government and the media concentrated so much of their time on the Opposition’s mistake that they succeeded in electing the tired, frail Sir Joseph Ward to office.

Michael Bassett: Bogus election media coverage

This election campaign has degenerated into a media circus with endless trivial claims and counter claims, many of them driven by the media. As a result, we, the long-suffering voters find ourselves dependent more and more on the integrity of the journalists who are reporting the parties’ policies. Sadly, many aren’t doing the job. We know the Herald’s Simon Wilson of old.

Michael Bassett: The view from abroad and the harsh realities

Someone once wrote that “distance lends enchantment to the view”. After several weeks in Canada and the United States, I found returning to New Zealand anything but enchanting. Seventy years ago, our country enjoyed a standard of living the equal of Canada and the US. In those days everything looked promising, and was. But we have now fallen way behind, and it’s distressingly obvious. Our public facilities, like airports, are inadequate. Roads have badly filled potholes, while contractors seem unable to construct anything on time, or within budget. In the main streets of Auckland and Wellington lots of shops are closed because there are no longer many shoppers in town. Rough sleepers curl up in doorways; recently I saw a man in Queen Street, Auckland’s main street, piddling against a shop front at 11am on a weekday. Only the foolhardy go into the city at night where there have been several murders in recent months.

Michael Bassett: Chippy's chickens fly the coop

While sympathetic journalists weep over Kiri Allan’s mental health woes and her manifold romantic troubles, everyone overlooks the real problem she shares with many other ministers in Chris Hipkins’ lack-lustre government – insufficient experience of real life. Getting to know how Parliament operates, spending time in opposition, and watching what is expected of a minister, are vital before becoming one. Three of Chris Hipkins’ accident-prone ministers this year – Michael Wood, Jan Tinetti and Kiri Allan – were all promoted far too early in their political careers. One previous term in the House isn’t enough.

Michael Bassett: Chris Hipkins and educational failure

The other day when I opened a campaign letter from Chris Hipkins containing a spelling mistake and a considerable amount of gobbledegook, I couldn’t help thinking back to Peter Fraser, Labour’s greatest leader. He was also Minister of Education. I published a biography of him in 2001 and I know quite a lot about Fraser. He was not just someone who held the Education portfolio. Reflecting his stern Highlands Scots upbringing, he was passionate about it, believing that education was the only sure ladder for people wanting to lead useful lives. Fraser and his Director-General of Education, Dr C.E. Beeby, were associated with some amazing achievements: over fourteen years the percentage of children receiving a secondary education in New Zealand rose from 58% to 92%, and the numbers attending universities increased by 150%. Consultation with the public through representative committees became the norm. No spelling mistakes from Fraser, and no gobbledegook.

Michael Bassett: The Greens and the coalition of chaos

It’s hard to suppress my feeling that Green Party MPs inhabit another planet. Their policy announcement at the weekend that they would introduce rent controls and hold increases to 3% pa told me that they know nothing about the history of housing or rent controls, either in New Zealand, or anywhere overseas. The Greens’ great nostrum for helping low income people in 2023 was first tried using a series of Rent Restriction Acts during World War One, more than a century ago. The idea proved to be disastrous. And when revived by the First Labour Government it was no more successful.