60% of journalists are now women in NZ and many are ardent fans of woke middle class identity politics (just check their twitter feeds to confirm that) and so the main lens of journalism in NZ is now identity.
No better has this been made painfully apparent than in the woke media’s coverage of the appointment of Carmel Sepuloni.
Read The Spinoff, Stuffs and NZ Heralds review of her appointment and it’s all identity politics soaked ‘you go girl’ feminism that champions her being the first Pacific Island Deputy.
Now let me be clear, I love our Pacific Community, and they should celebrate a Pacific Island appointee after the decades and decades of loyalty they’ve shown the Labour Party, but by only viewing her appointment through the middle class identity politics lens, The Spinoff, Stuff and NZ Herald have miss the real story an do their readers a terrible disservice.
For the woke, diversity and representation are the only currency, meritocracy is a heteronormative white male privilege and nothing matters more than identity.
Which is deeply problematic because a critical analysis of Carmel Sepuloni’s time as Social Welfare Minister highlights how shallow The Spinoff, Stuff and NZ Heralds ‘journalism’ is.
The Minister refused to implement any single one of the 42 key recommendations from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group…
Govt yet to fully implement a single key WEAG recommendation nearly three years on: new research
None of the 42 key recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) have been fully implemented almost three years after the report release, with 22 minimally or partially implemented, new research by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has found.
….The Minister threw 4000 disabled beneficiaries off welfare…
Govt sanctions sick jobseekers for failing to prepare for work
The Labour Government has cut the benefits of around 4000 sick, injured of disabled jobseekers in the last five years because they weren’t preparing to return to work fast enough.
…and most appallingly, the Minister gutlessly acquiesced to State Services to remove the Children’s Commissioner from overseeing Oranga Tamariki which will see vulnerable children in State care made even more vulnerable.
Carmel Sepuloni is a Labour Party Social Welfare Minister, in her time she has implemented no recommendations to make life easier for beneficiaries, she has thrown 4000 disabled beneficiaries off welfare and she has made the life of vulnerable children in state care far more dangerous, and yet as far as the female journalists at Spinoff, Stuff and NZ Herald are concerned none of that matters because hashtag feminism, hashtag diversity.
This is an appalling state of journalism.
For every beneficiary in NZ, the reality is you can not seriously vote Labour this election and you must vote either Māori Party or Greens because only they have the actual social policy to make their lives better.
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“60% of journalists are now women in NZ and many are ardent fans of woke middle class identity politics (just check their twitter feeds to confirm that) and so the main lens of journalism in NZ is now identity.”
Completely agree Martyn. The good news is most of them will be looking for new jobs when their organizations have the taxpayer funded taps turned off by the new government later this year. I hear CNN and The Beijing Times are hiring.
It’s not helping heart-breakingly vulnerable children or chronically disabled person that counts, it’s getting the West Auckland vote. These scribblers are paid how to write.
What’s more, Sepuloni’s Culture Ministry’s insane cancelling of Shakespeare on ridiculous grounds was part of the assault upon European culture permeating the western world. Lock up your books.
I’ll say it again: Labour movement newspapers, radio stations, and television programmes must return.
Millions of people are not being informed of what is actually going on, and are often simply lied to.
The two provincial dailies I buy are barely competent, but hardly very informative. The national dailies are full of fluff and nonsense, and not worth the money. The local broadcasters are totally unwatchable, and a waste of time if you can watch the cable news networks.
Journalism in NZ is in an appalling state, with a few exceptions, including this blog. In a nutshell everything is filtered through a woke lens
she did nothing as a minister why assume she’ll extract the digit as deputy PM?
” For every beneficiary in NZ, the reality is you can not seriously vote Labour this election and you must vote either Māori Party or Greens because only they have the actual social policy to make their lives better. ”
How honestly sad is that statement.
In other words the reality is that this group of vulnerable New Zealanders and I also include many destitute superannuant’s have no voice , no representation but every three years their votes are solicited by LINO and the Green party with promises to tackle the savagery of the current approach to welfare and spend vast amounts of money on working groups including WEAG then just turn around and walk away and pretend these people don’t exist for another three years.
That is where Jacinda Ardern failed in her promises of transformation and up until now LINO failing to use their majority to provide a fairer regulated capitalism.
The Greens have been MIA particularly with Marama Davidson who is the associate minister for housing with special responsibility for homelessness.
I expected Marama to be much more forthright about the plight of the burgeoning underclass after her work at the human rights commission for nine years.
Unless Chippie as you call the PM suddenly does a u turn and remembers what and who his party used to stand for then I suspect no change to the status quo. Different face and style but business as usual.
” This is an appalling state of journalism. ”
Even people coming in from overseas are shocked the lack of anything in depth being discussed on the tv shows you mentioned. Its more like Woman’s weekly and cheap entertainment than actual real life.
Only reputable news sources that don’t operate in the mainstream like T.D.B and its contributors like Susan St John do we get a clearer picture of the true gravity of the crises that exist.
Mosa. Marama is busy solving domestic violence. I wonder how that’s going.
Why is there domestic violence, didn’t National solve that issue during their 9 years, or in truth did they create it?
Either way Marama shouldn’t have to be in a position to ” fix” domestic violence.
For every beneficiary in NZ, the reality is you can not seriously vote Labour this election and you must vote either Māori Party or Greens because only they have the actual social policy to make their lives better.
This is exactly why I party vote greens .
Labours bullshit attitude towards beneficiaries and the bullshit Pharmac attitude until FORCED TO HAVE THE REVIEW AND REFUSED TO INCLUDE THE FUNDING model is exactly why I party voted Greens in 17 and 20.
Agree with everything you said Martyn in this article.
Martyn – Great commentary and hat tip for your interview with Plunkett on the Platform on this subject and the role of the woke media in this. I agree the current MSM outlets are facing existential crisis as their feelings based advocacy journalism is now being trumped by real world facts and economics. For a country with such shameful statistics on child abuse to have one of the main state agency’s charged with their protection basically remove the most senior advocate for the abused and for the Fourth Estate to ignore this is beyond belief. It is actually malevolent.
Salacious +Crumb. Agree 100%. This country’s attitude towards children almost defies description.
Removing the Commissioner for Children to protect the inept agencies who are funded to care for them, is worse than obscene and I hope that New Zealand – oops – Aotearoa – gets hammered at the Geneva Review.
But even then, nothing will change; the Minister will chip that his ancestors were swindled 140 years ago, oblivious to the fact that mud wallowing does not ensure that every child counts. One passionate person in Parliament could make a huge difference to the lives of all of our children, but there’s nobody there. The silence of the so-called media stinks.
Read The Spinoff, Stuffs and NZ Heralds review of her appointment and it’s all identity politics soaked ‘you go girl’ feminism that champions her being the first Pacific Island Deputy.
This reminds me of attitude shown by Margaret Thatcher, intoxicated that she was PM – female, middle class with social advancement, and first woman to be university educated, science trained – achieving as conservative woman, not feminist.
People didn’t like Winston Churchill for a number of good reasons but he pulled out his plum and appealed to the masses. Thatcher should have stayed in touch with the class from which her surname arose from, and had real concern for them while she also stuck her fingers in the foie gras; fat liver for fathead swelled grotesquely. Sepuloni seems to be akin to that process and possibly, open to the same judgments that hit Margaret.
Deputy P.M Sepuloni deserves her promotion. She will acquit herself well and Labour have every chance of returning for a third term.
Welfare Minister who did bugger all with her portfolio other than maintain the existing problems.
Deserves to be scorned.
Correct, existing problems that she didn’t fix, existing being pre 2017.
She’s our best weapon!
The men will have to push through the glass ceiling now to get the jobs…..