MEDIAWATCH: TVNZ carry Right wing apologist Liam Hehir’s ridiculous spin lines

Opinion: The quick wins in the Government’s 100-day plan

Opinion: It will likely take time for many of the Government’s 100-day plans to make any impact, but there are some things New Zealanders can begin enjoying soon, writes Liam Hehir.

You know shit must be bad for the Right when Liam bloody Hehir is being published on TVNZ!

Hehir is the wettest right winger in NZ, less brown shirt, more vacant light blue turtleneck blouse, he is the go to panelist for The Nation on TV3 which tells you all you need to know about the panel on TV3s The Nation.

He is so wet, he never dries. Like Simeon Brown, but less charismatic.

I know, how on earth is that possible?

His trite brand of what passes for commentary and humour in whatever provincial hamlet he operates out of is as safe as porridge and twice as dull.

He’s beige on beige on beige.

Slamming your hand in a car door is preferable to having to listen to him.

After a fortnight of self inflected clusterfucks by this new hard right racist Government, Liam’s been wheeled out to tell us of all the ‘wins’ from this Q Zealand Government.

Lower fuel prices??? – Ummmmm. The Auckland Fuel Tax is there to pay for the fucking infrastructure you moron! Auckland’s infrastructure is fucked, our motorways are in gridlock, the roads are broken and the fund that is supposed to fund the mass transport fixes is being dumped!!! How is destroying the fund that attempts to resource our desperately needed infrastructure for the short term gain of less tax on petrol a ‘win’?

Cold medicine that actually works??? – This isn’t a social policy, it’s the script to Breaking Bad! Over the counter meth ingredients that will fund the home grown meth trade isn’t a ‘win’. If you want medicine with Pseudoephedrine you can get it via prescription, what this new policy will do is make Pharmacies focal points for ram raids and abuse. The only winner here are local meth cooks and the corporates pimping Pseudoephedrine. Expect a surge in home meth labs again.

A more structured environment in schools ???- For God’s sakes, the school can already ban phones, this isn’t new, but making it compulsory is going to cause mass delays for kids handing in their phones and picking them back up each day. It’s pointless virtue signalling for the Right.

Less brazen gang activity – Oh for God’s sake! If you think banning gang patches (which will get immediately challenged in Court) will make you ‘safe’, you should look at the rock solid numbers National have for their Foreign Buyers Tax! Mark Mitchell is such a boof head he’s likely to over egg the first big test and send in armed police at a Gang Tangi to remove Patches and it will spill into a bloodbath!

More business confidence around hiring – Small business already had the power to remove someone before 90 days, expanding it to corporations will legitimise a system of constantly dumping workers for ever increasing numbers of more exploitable migrant workers. So ‘More business confidence around exploiting’ should be the headline.

Realistic expectations and hope for the future – Oh fuck right off! The anti-Māori, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-environment, anti-worker agenda was immediately protested against by Māori and the desire to allow 8000 dead for tax cuts reverberated around the planet in negative headline after negative headline! In what dimension of Hell is that ‘realistic expectations and hope for the future’???

So let me get this completely straight, we should collectively ignore this new hard right racist Governments anti-Māori agenda, anti-worker agenda, anti-renter agenda, anti-beneficiary agenda, anti-environmental agenda, anti-drug addict agenda and anti-disabled agenda because Liam will be able to get a cough medicine over the counter?

Like, sure, no one wants poor wee Liam to have to cough more than he does, but who really gives a fuck about Liam and his cough?

No one should give a fuck about Liam being able to get over the counter cough medicine in return for a race war!

This Hard Right Racist Government with its anti-Māori, anti-Environment, anti-worker, anti-beneficiary, anti-renter, anti-drug addict, anti-disabled agenda has mistaken the anger towards Labour as a mandate for their culture war vengeance!

2023 wasn’t an election, it was a  grudge fuck against Labour by an embittered post Covid electorate who were economically insecure, alienated by woke dogma and heart broken that all Labour could do with a once in a generation MMP majority was ‘good first steps’ rather than transformational leaps.

It has resulted in a Hard Right Racist Government bound together only by a shared glee in bashing beneficiaries, workers, renters, prisoners, the environment, gang members, drug addicts and the disabled.

They all have a particular dislike for Māori and have used attempts at co-governance to fulfil the promise of the Treaty (which is our collective obligation) as a weapon with which to cement into place 19th Century White Settler Privilege and call that ‘democracy’.

As Verity Johnson so scathingly observes in her must read column, there is no Honeymoon here, just regret from voters…

Verity Johnson: This isn’t the honeymoon period, it’s the morning after

There’s been a lot said this week about the political honeymoon period with the Government. Namely, where the hell has it gone?

After all, this is supposed to be the french toast and art galleries period of our political relationship with Luxon & co. And yet there is a distinct lack of romance in the air right now.

In fact, I’d say this feels more like 14 years into a relationship. The point where you see your spouse eat mayonnaise straight from the jar while wearing a brown, stained towelling robe that makes them look like a recently shot deer – and realise that you can’t afford a divorce.

Now, many people have been blamed for spoiling the Government’s honeymoon. Mostly Winnie. But also David Seymour because, well, because it’s those two. But let’s be real here.

There was never going to be a honeymoon period.

Because we’re not in love with this government. Like I said the other week, Christopher Luxon is the rebound boyfriend who we’ve married because our ex broke our heart. So there was never going to be a morning-sex-in-the Seychelles period anyway. This was the kind of marriage where you wake up the next day in Vegas, and the crushing enormity of what you’ve done squats onto your chest like an FBI agent bursting in the door to arrest you for gross stupidity…..

So no, there was never going to be a honeymoon. Just the morning after.

Because let’s face it, that’s how most of us feel: dazed, disorientated and damply disappointed.

No one’s particularly happy with the new bunch, whether you’re left, right, centre, everyone seems to feel generally dissatisfied. In fact, in the everyday world, not the political or media world, you could best sum up everyone’s mood right now with, WTF just happened?

…Verity is right, no one wanted this right wing vomit as social policy, they were angry at Labour for their fecklessness!

The NZ Political Right have mistaken anger at Labour as a mandate for culture war vengeance and they have conflated Majoritarianism as Democracy!

In a modern liberal democracy, you acknowledge the power imbalance created in society and you resource to ensure those power imbalances are compensated for!

In a modern liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.

It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.

Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.

Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.

The Political Right are screaming that imposing Qanon talking points as social policy, destroying workers rights, Tobacco deaths for tax cuts and taking $555million from the poorest families are all acceptable because they have the Majority so fuck everyone else!

That’s why on the first day of the Government there were nationwide protests. That’s why in the first week of the new Government global headlines were attacking our u-turn on gas and oil exploration and smoking policy.

Dismantling the values of a liberal progressive democracy to cement into place 19th Century White Settler privilege using culture war vengeance as social policy IS NOT Democratic, it’s majoritarianism without any of the values of a true Democracy.

You can’t shit on Renters, Māori, the Environment, Workers, Beneficiaries and Prisoners while pretending to be democratic.

That’s the zeal of the Lynch mob, that’s not Democracy!

Majoritarianism is the whip of the autocrat masquerading as legitimacy. Is has none of the soul or wisdom that a Democracy requires to be meaningful.

But sure, those ‘quick’ wins from Liam, what were they again, cough medicine, pointless virtue signals on phones and kids, counter productive removal of Petrol taxes and a weird sense of ‘realistic expectations’???

And we get a race war in return for those ‘wins’?

When Liam is being spun to defend what is the worst start of any Government in modern political history, you know things are not going well.

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