Mike Butler: Covid response a shambles or a coup?

Has the Ardern government’s response to Covid-19 been simply a shambles or is it a coup, a seizure of political power to establish a socialist dictatorship? Ron Asher’s new book A Jab in the Dark – Covid vaccines and the new health dictatorship presents evidence that a dictatorship has been established in New Zealand.

Authoritarian socialism is a political-economic system that can be generally described as socialist, but one that rejects the liberal-democratic concepts of multi-party politics, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, and freedom of expression.

Since October 2017, when New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters anointed Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister, a heady mix of power, adoration, and opportunity to control presented by a fear-inducing pandemic, has enabled her to transform New Zealand from a free, open democracy to a police state in which “the unvaccinated” are denied basic rights.

Mike Hosking: Is the vaccine worth risking your career for?

 

The great mystery for me of the vaccine mandate is, just what is it about the vaccine that would lead you to voluntarily want to quit your job? 

I get it if you're 22, your job sucks, you're on minimum wage, you don’t really know what you want to do in life, and the benefit still offers an element of appeal. But the mandates around teaching and healthcare are different, aren't they? 

Firstly, you are qualified and you studied. To study you had to dedicate yourself, you clearly wanted to do this. And yet a jab is the difference between you following your dream and being unemployed? You are not going on welfare, it's a world away from where you were financially. 

Mike Butler: Govt hazy on mandate data

A series of questions sent to the Office of Treaty Settlements revealed patchy information and a government that is hazy on data to do with claimant group mandates, the cornerstone of treaty settlement integrity.

Deeds of mandate are intended to provide evidence that the body claiming mandate has the widespread support of the members of the claimant group to negotiate a settlement of perceived treaty breaches by the Crown.