I'm Glad The Right Wing Coalition Won

Plus: the Covid impacts NZ didn't experience and some were never grateful to avoid

Dame Jacinda Adern would not accept “acceptable death rates” during Covid. But in the UK the Tory government said “Let them die”.

Additions below

Yesterday, when I saw the news that a Timaru factory with hundreds of jobs on the line was going to close, I couldn't help but think:"I'm so glad this lot won the election."

After all, look at what’s been happening:

• 23,000 - 26,000 more people on jobseekers since this government got into power

• Liquidation numbers are soaring all over and businesses 'can't hang on’

• Winstone Pulp International mill closures will be 'catastrophic' for Central North Island

• They just closed all West Coast urgent care GP clinics and can’t guarantee people won’t die from that

• We have pregnant women who need urgent care waiting in EDs with hundreds of others who sleep on floors and walk outside with medical tubes, while the part time $320,000 Health Commissioner says about some hospitals not having doctors is, well - “It’s not my job to fix everything”

• This week, the government made up a $3bn number, from their internal experts”, claiming Dunedin hospital had to be cancelled. Nurses say people will die from this but that's not important to them - they already are.

• Doctors’ warnings have been ignored for months while the govt systematically breaks down our health system, paying the lowest ever per capita health budget, and Lester Levy maligns doctors as “sabotage” and “resistance”.

• Now Seymour wants schools and the Ministry to intervene in > 5 day absences, and prosecute parents with problems as if that will help any child, while the PM and Finance Minister micro-manage public servants into offices despite having no data to suggest it will improve jack all, except low morale

• Construction is on its knees after pleading with the government for months on end to restart projects

• They mock democracy with an unannounced 4 day public submission timeframe for repealing the offshore mining ban. Whether you’re for or against it, it still doesn’t speak well for the country

• Just a few months in, multiple Government Ministers have been reprimanded by the Chief Ombudsman and Parliamentary Commissioner for deception

• They're giving hundreds of millions of dollars to tobacco companies while crying poor about the disabled, poor kids, the sick, and our ferries.

• ACT’s friend Alwyn Poole will be getting 4 new charter schools on $153 million of taxpayer money despite the Auditor General finding "[his prior charter school] board failed to recognise that a conflict of interest arose when they effectively decided to pay $450,000 to themselves”

Can you imagine the hell that would be the mouthpieces of Taxpayers Union, Free Speech union, Groundswell, Hobsons Pledge, Newstalk ZB, Platform, NZ Herald headlines - if this was under the last government?

• Can you hear Heather Du-Pliess's shrieks?

• Ryan Bridge and Mike Hoskin's excited excuses for dramatic outrage?

• Can you imagine red Taxpayer Union vans circling our streets complete with large soft toy figures for press shots detailing Kiwis' outrage at this government killing off our citizens, our disabled, our elderly, our sick and our economy?

• Can you see the media headlines on NZ Herald and even Stuff?

• Can you imagine the slogans that would be created about the Ministers and government and the attacks on Jacinda, Ginny, Barbara, Ayesha, Kieran, Chippie, Grant?

• Can you imagine the coalitions that would be formed across the country, of councils and new groups, supported by big money mouthpieces, telling everyone how bad this government is? - What a nanny state we have become, and what economic vandalism and incompetence really looks like?

But we don't see any of that.

We don't hear it.

We don't feel it - unless we reach for those news reports or insights ourselves.

And those of us who don't know, just don't know.

And we remain grateful to the efforts of this Coalition right wing government who are "saving our lives" and "protecting and salvaging our economy" from the economic vandalism of Labour/Greens - despite the record showing a positive assessment of our financials by ratings agencies, markets and independent economists?

The largest majority of Kiwis don’t even know Nicola Willis borrowed $12bn more for the $14bn of tax cuts which were immediately whittled away by govt’s taxes elsewhere. Tax cuts which the IMF & OECD told them not to do and which even John Key agreed, urging Luxon to take the long view and reconsider.

But ask anyone and they know Grant Robertson incurred “record” debt for Covid, right?.

What they don’t know: The last government’s legacy of saving lives, supporting businesses and employees through Covid, and investing in health and infrastructure, left NZ’s government debt very low.

In fact, we had low government debt to GDP - the lowest third of OECD countries, and even lower for net debt to GDP. New Zealand’s public sector as a percentage of employment is comparable to the UK’s and Australia.

Nor do most know that it’s not bicycle lanes that are making them poorer. Nor woke school lunches or Māori who - through an entire lifttime of land settlements have only received less than $3bn. i.e. less than landlords get in one 4 year period.

And that we have more than enough money for wealth and prosperity, and for building a future predicated on science, technology, renewables and productivity if we had wanted to.

To the end of the last government, all economic indicators were pointing to a soft landing and projections - and in January, Treasury confirmed finances were in “better shape than expected”.

Yet the economic reality has nosedived under National’s poor prognosis and austerity government choices.

Still, still - everyone has an individual responsibility to not follow fear and hate - and determine truth and analysis.

They say we all get the governments we deserve.

It’s a post-fact world dominated by big, vested interest money, so the truth is a little more complicated.

But - the principle remains.

I hope we can unite and re-define a system that works only for the few, and where lies have won the day.

Kiwis deserve better, and so does the world.

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Shane Reti’s Pre-Election Promise to Dunedin

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The Covid Impacts NZ Never Felt or Saw

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Today’s Song: The Sound of Silence