What makes us tick
Reflecting on anti-Māori sentiment, privatization and our media's complicity
This morning the sky was bright.
The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.
Their calls are clear and beautiful.
Just some random thoughts:
Māori
Paul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises Māori connections to a part of the marine and coastal area.
The Court of Appeal had ruled, under the Re Edwards case, that Māori didn’t have to satisfy the literal rule that would require applicants to prove exclusive use and occupation from 1840 to the present day. That was unacceptable to this Government, who had agreed with NZ First it would undo it in their Coalition agreements.
To be clear, those claims “cannot be sold and has no effect on public access, fishing or other recreational activities, but grants rights over resource consents, conservation, consultation rights over marine mammal watching and coastal policy, and ownership of various minerals and protected objects.” (RNZ) The legislation will go out in September.
I had noticed and written about it earlier - that on conservative forums a few weeks back, Hobsons Pledge - Casey Costello’s dig - was riling up anti-Māori sentiment with claims Māori were stealing our entire coastline.
They used emotional language such as “theft” to paint Māori effectively as thieves and enemies. (If the word is familiar, it was used with resounding impact on 3 Waters.) And voila, here we have the National Government in action, to act for the people on the right.
New Zealand First and ACT are allied in leading the anti-Māori rights charge. And I’m not surprised, but it’s sad to see those with Māori heritage lead that charge. I wrote about potential motivations here and noted earlier that the anti-Māori sentiment wars are coming. They need to, for Seymour to succeed.
Interestingly, National have come well and far in jabbing at Māori rights. I think the calculation is that so long as their two far right partners can rally more and more anti-Māori sentiment among the people, then National are willing to do the deed. Doesn’t bode well and the likelihood that Luxon flip flops on the Treaty Principles Bill - if he hasn’t already - increases.
Elsewhere, yesterday, Karen Chhour said that she couldn’t guarantee that youths in boot camps wouldn’t suffer abuse, aka “Abuse in Care”. Most of her program’s participants are Māori. This video clip shows her reaction to the question last month . It showed a terrible grasp on the intellectual components of her role, in my view.
Privatisation
It’s been obvious that the government is interested in privatisation, but what’s becoming clearer, is they are really, really into it. And that doesn’t bode well.
As the UK confronts a decade and a half of Tory vandalism, privatisation and trickle down economic policies that has left Councils bankrupt, their health system destroyed, and the Brits poorer and sicker, our government, funded by the same Tory donor class, is going hell for leather.
Two days ago, the Guardian wrote: The era of privatisation is nearly over. But cleaning up the mess left behind will take years
“From the 1980s until recently, politicians saw privatisation as a way to get a big bucket of money to spend on popular projects.”
“A review by Allan Fels and David Cousins has found, the NSW (Australia) government is at risk of being held hostage by (road) toll operators.
The UK’s new Starmer government is grappling with the impending failure of Thames Water, privatised under Thatcher and stripped bare by its private owners.
Yet not a squeak from the most mainstream headlines in New Zealand
Privatisation is exactly what Chris Bishop said would rule when he addressed local councils a month ago. The days of free rides are over, apparently, and he said we’d need to expect all infrastructure programs in future to be “user pays” and based on privatised models. That’s clear in the PPP build of the mega prison, roads, Kiwirail’s ferries future potentially, as well as their signalled use of PPP for police stations, defence etc. Multinationals like Philip Morris, Veoila, Honeywell, are all clamouring for a part of the feast.
Goldsmith is as usual backing up his team, saying that sales of state owned enterprises are on the cards. Translation: As long as they can sell it to the public, privatisation of assets will happen. No-one has ever accused this government of being slow off the mark.
Corporations are feeding off of New Zealand. and the voters on the right have been taught that the real problem is cycleways, Māori, and the woke left. And that Labour’s “economic vandalism” leaves no choice for this Coalition government. It’s patently untrue, as Bernard Hickey wrote about in this excellent piece. All of this is an alarming trend of misdirection and mistruth that can only lead to further deterioration of our great country.
Complicity
Today, no-one - or not too many, at least - would sympathise with Nazis.
Hitler ran tremendously successful propaganda campaigns based on lies and mistruths. For example, one of them was to say disabled people were costing “YOU” money. Pitting self interest against more awakened causes has always been a winning strategy perhaps - never mind the truth of those claims. Hook someone with fear emotionally, and you have them. They will no longer notice you are stealing right from under their nose.
Luxon took a page right out of Atlas Network backed Ronald Reagan’s strategy of blaming beneficiaries earlier in the year. Punching down is easy.
We now know by observing Trump and the success of the Tory years, that it’s easy to manipulate people, but what brings this all to mind, is the weakness of a media system that believes being “balanced” is letting lies go unchecked, or ignore context around government messages.
National and ACT were an effective opposition hit squad. Apparently Mark Mitchell used to regularly look at the gang membership list and hammer Labour as “soft on crime” anytime it increased. Yet when Tova O’Brien asked him about the gang membership increase under National, Mitchell batted it away as a meaningless number.
Melissa Lee, possibly one of the most visibly incompetent Ministers of recent time, took down Labour’s Media Minister Claire Curan by saying Curran’s reforms were “solutions looking for problems.” Were they? I’m glad Lee did a lot for our media, or is the media’s weakness, this government’s strength. Isnt’t that what Lee inferred, when reporters first asked her about Newshub’s closure? She said: “There’s always Sky News.”
Because that’s what our country needs - another Fox News impressionist dancing in every Kiwi’s backyards.
The left block, writ large, don’t appear to have the same ‘Dirty Politics’ mentality so they largely attack on facts, and not mistruths. Their voters expect those standards of integrity from them. But it just doesn’t seem to get the ‘clicks' or attention.
Yet here we now see a huge vaccuum now where the rules of the chessboard has changed.
In the media’s rush to communicate the appointment of Lester Levy as Health NZ Te Whatu Ora’s Commissioner, most missed the details that only filtered out in subsequent days - the “deficit” had nothing to do with the operating model. Instead, it had everything to do with nurses being successfully recruited, leading to higher nurses pay as well as legacy issues related to backdated pay etc. The government knew about this all in March but still intentionally underfunded the health budget.
The National-ACT-NZ First government understands that most people will just remember the first headlines.
Is it a deficit if you intentionally underfund it? I suppose so, technically, but is this the era of a brave new world of political news?
And extraordinarily, if the government:
Knew about the “deficit” in March 2024,
Underfunded it for their May 2024 budget, but
Announced it as an unforseen crisis in July 2024,
What is really at play?
Could it be activating the Atlas Network’s most devoted motto:
“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
I understand New Zealand is a small country and people try to get along to make do, and ensure long term business prospects and relationships, but whether it’s a right wing corporate sponsored media entity like NZME, or Stuff which appears mainly interested in clicks, or RNZ which has to “behave”, it’s disheartening to follow the tune of a Pied Piper that we already know the ending to.
Balance is critical and so is fair coverage, but a key underpinning of media entities is facts and context. At least, that’s what I had always believed.
This government’s polices and actions that increase child poverty even as it tries to enrich corporations at our cost is shameful. Willis had already admitted on Jack Tame’s Q&A post-budget that her Government would not meet their child poverty targets due to their policies, and today, news is coming out they’ve quietly lowered targets.
Good old National team. Yet they are really only able to do this with the support, and echoing of their narratives, through a friendly, pliable and/or complicit media network.
There are times when updates to the operating system are required, and there are times when the media may need to be stronger in the face of propaganda-like governments.
It’s easy to judge those from history. It’s much harder to show courage in the moment.
And that part applies to all of us.
Well constructed and clearly laid out for an honest appraisal of the current situation in Aoteoroa 2024! Kia kaha Mountain Tui!,
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾Bravo! I knew there was a reason to subscribe - not only is this clear & concise but arms me with information to fight back. I did not know about the attack on Customary Marine Title - perhaps it was in one of my feeds, but so much is happening it is hard to keep up! That is another one of the right wing strategies - keep throwing punches so that your opposition gets confused and/or doesn't get a chance to counter because another punch lands - in this case the analogy is that the punches are below the belt, but there is no referee to stop them.
It seems to me that perhaps this is all a recognition that these coalition partners understand what they want is actually NOT popular & they have to get things done real quick before they get tossed out next election? So soonest done changes will be entrenched & hard to roll back? Or are they just arrogant & out of touch with humanity as it pertains to "real" people and their day to day & future lives?