The acerbic Chris Finlayson has lashed out at the Law Commission for responding to his desire to try and slip secret courts into National’s compromised Health and Safety legislation.
He says it’s the stupid Law Commission’s fault for reading an old version of the bill, but admits that there will be a small place for secret courts in the legislation.
Why using law that was supposed to be applied to terrorism is getting slipped into legislation on domestic health and safety should alarm every NZer.
Is the law aimed at Government Intelligence departments, or could ‘national interest’ be applied to any industry the Government deems as important enough to hide the truth? We already have legislation that means those who die in the military will have secret internal inquests into their deaths, is this an attempt to recreate that into Health and Safety laws?
If it is why?
The reality is though that Finlayson is right, this Government isn’t a secret crypto-fascist state, that’s because they are very open about their crypto-fascism.
Let’s look at this Government’s record shall we?
- It has given Police vast new search and surveillance powers
- It has passed retrospective legislation to let the Police off from illegal spying,
- It has passed laws to allow the SIS to spy without a warrant
- It has passed laws that allow mass surveillance loopholes and then lied to the public about that mass surveillance
- It passes this mass surveillance along to the NSA
- It has attacked journalists who challenge it
- It has been deeply involved in Dirty Politics which used many mainstream media outlets
- It has attacked beneficiaries and the poor while borrowing billions in tax cuts for the rich
- And it has had those Journalists it finds too critical silenced off air.
This is a Government whose PMs Office colluded with the Secret Intelligence Service to smear Phil Goff, the Leader of the Opposition, with falsehoods months before the 2011 election which saw Phil Goff lose. They did that smearing via a far right hate speech merchant like Cameron Slater.
The only reason this doesn’t spook the sleepy hobbits is because most NZers have the vocab level of your average 16 year old and don’t have any idea what the word crypto-fascist means.
Helen Clark was demonised for water saving shower heads, powers saving light bulbs, a speeding ticket, signing a painting she didn’t paint and changing legislation that stopped parents assaulting their children getting off from a loop hole in the law.
Compare that to the vast abuses of power this Government have adopted.
The difference between what Clark was crucified for and what John Key gets away with is the reason the politically engaged are outraged with National. The politically disengaged however see that anger and back away in shock at the fury.
This is why the politically engaged and the politically disengaged are creating so much friction between each other.
NZ is at present a social experiment under Key & Co, where the truth is very hard to come by, quite scary really.
And they are getting away with it because we have become complacent and believe what the media is feeding us.
It looks even worse from overseas!
Actually I take a less charitable view than Martyn or Jack.
I believe it is this way because it is totally in the Kiwi nature to be like this.
I arrived in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1967 as a secondary school pupil and found adapting to life here quite difficult because of the crypto-fascist blankness of Kiwis. Adults or children, there seemed to be an odd paranoia about communism that the rest of the world (at least where I came from) had long ago grown out of. I’m guessing that this is what gave rise to this penchant for crypto-fascism.
It is not at all a pleasant cultural aspect and yet here it is still alive and well in 2015. The only reason the National Government can institutionalise this rubbish is because Kiwis themselves believe in it. It’s that simple.
Kind of ironic when you see how often the Kiwi bangs on about the wars and “our part in the downfall of fascism”.
The National Government and their supporters control this country because the average Kiwi is quite complacent and accepts what Governments prescribe for them. We hero worship the likes of John Key and Bill English, and put them on pedistalls.
The average NZ voter sees John Key as some form of financial guru, and the NZ Press portray him as the Wizard of Wall Street.
We also have a hysterical media who hero worship Key & Co, ie Mike Hoskings who is an employee of the State Broadcaster TV One, on approx $600-$700k to preach National Party propaganda.
All very true Jack.
I recon there’s a fair few out there that see what’s going on in NZ and don’t agree with it. They remain spinelessly disengaged because they can’t own their shit – IE. voting for National. People just can’t accept or admit they’ve been duped.
People don’t vote for Act’s hard-line policies. So the Righties implement those same polices, gradually, by stealth. Same shit, just applied more slowly.
Sadly, it works. People are mugs when it comes to scams. Just ask any Nigerian offering $50 million, in return for your bank account details and signature on a blank piece of paper…..
While I understand your frustration with lack of power we, the people, seem to have over our the political affairs of our country, I think it’s unfair to blame people who live in a dictatorship for the behaviour of dictators. While it’s true that this government was elected, it’s also true that Hitler’s government was elected, and that the USSR had regular elections for all sorts of offices and positions. Having elections, despite what the corporate media would have us think, is not what democracy is about, and having them is no guarantee that you live in a democracy.
In fact, democracy is about certain principles being inviolable, whoever might win an election (or even when there aren’t any), principles like:
* freedom from unreasonable search and seizure (Search and Surveillance Act, GCSB Act, TICS Act, DIA web filter)
* freedom of speech (Harmful Digital Censorship Act)
* freedom to assemble
etc etc
The doco ‘Taking Liberties’ makes a list of these principles, and shows how the Blair government violated all of them in the UK. Subsequent UK governments have done the same, as did our own Blair, Helen Clark, and Snapper Key and Co. have just carried on with more of the same.
What would a pro-democracy movement in Aotearoa look like?
Key has taken his experimental crypto-fascism to a new level of bold as bullshit, a simple “I don’t listen to you, you listen to me.”
Key has no respect, no morals, no honour, no pride. He’s only living for his make as much profit for himself and create any and all ruination of the lives of so many others.
What Key has forgotten, is that his carnage through crypto-fascism will eventually lead him to meet up with Karma.
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