There is a creeping Authoritarianism in this Government.
From Winston’s Big Lie that the entire NZ media were bribed, to his Qanon AntiVaxx Conspiracy Swamp Kingdom culture war revenge fantasies.
From ACT’s attack on the Treaty and attempt to redefine it without agreement from Māori to taking out of the mouths of hungry children to fund $2.9billion in tax breaks to the richest landlords.
From National immediately passing anti worker, anti renter, anti Māori, anti environment legislation to fast track powers for trans national mining interests.
All done misusing Urgency.
Now we get the threats.
The threats to parents with truant kids, to gang members, to beneficiaries, to the disabled, to the state tenants, to anyone their voters despise, this Government is taking away the carrot and only using sticks.
Hungry kids can’t eat sticks.
The Egalitarian State can’t be built with sticks.
The move closer to the American Military Industrial Complex is dangerous and someone as unhinged as Judith Collins should not be anywhere near the Intelligence Apparatus.
This new hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government are now attacking minority spaces on campus FFS.
This is a Government bound together by their mutual hate of the poor.
Paul Goldsmith’s belief that he has the power to be NZs chief censor and art critique serves testament to a born to rule smugness and intellectual deceit.
This Government’s true values will be borne out under the stress of the economic recession.
In New Zealand, we like our fascism casual, our redneckery beige with subtle passive aggressiveness overtones. The crispness of how brown these shirts now turn however will spook the hell out of middle NZ who just wanted their house price to go up 10%.
This Government is here to serve the interests of their donor corporate masters and to punish those their angry voters despise.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
My take from their actions which as you say are dangerous is that they don’t understand how other people live, while I did not make a habit of bunking school whenever I did it was not with my parents permission, they were both at work by the time school started so attending school was a high trust model which usually worked. The idea that fining parents will somehow improve school attendance seems far fetched, if the parents are complicit in the student’s absence then it seems unlikely that fines will improve their view on school attendance & if the parent is unaware then the child is not at school then fines are just another unnecessary burden that they don’t deserve.
This is now a society that controls by distant order – by fines, monetary punishment etc – money being the highest form of satisfaction and achievement to the PTB. Materialists to the core. When will we be back to 19th century where the PTB didn’t want the poor to be educated, even to write or read. Their job was to cope, serve, hand wash huge piles of sheets etc from big houses, sew little stitches from dawn to night, go down mines from when they were perhaps
aged 8 sometimes earlier, crawl up chimneys whlie young and small, perhaps from 6. It happened, it can again.
The “ugly New Zealander” is becoming more emboldened by the day with this shower of shit Govt. The positive news perhaps is that many of them are older fuckers with funerals coming up sooner rather than later.
New gens need to hang in there and get organised, 2026 will see a definite numbers advantage over boomers and they better use it! How much of the NZ State and infrastructure will be left though is the concern. NZ is at a tipping point of going near enough to fully electric but these clowns are going to wreck that with more fossil fuel adventures.
Authoritarianism is definitely the flavour of this lot–animal cruelty, environmental degradation, spitefully attacking EVs!, for profit Charter Schools, “snatch the patches”, take lunches off the kids…punitive nasty stuff for their nasty supporters as Martyn says.
Hopefully the central labour organisation–now of course the NZCTU–will soon get its first class left leadership since the FOL’s Jim Knox. With thousands of public servants about to be on “Jobseeker Allowance”–or will they join Filipinos milking cows…the PSA and other state sector unions may finally drop their bullshit political neutrality stance. This is a slash the state Govt. and working class and community fightback is needed.
Even for tory lovers that would like nothing more than to perform anilingus on Baldrick and Judith, there is a huge issue…Climate Disaster…that flows on to so many other areas of life…housing, insurance, employment, extreme weather events…what will these clowns ever do about that apart from subsidies to farmers? Too wet, or too dry and the sheep shaggers get a nice pay day regardless of what the rest of us put up with.
That lot had six years and achieved what?
Growing a government department from 37 staff to 156 staff and now the government department cuts it back to 93.
If the next generation that you speak of will do this job properly and cut government departments back to 12 ministries and that specific department to 37 staff ….. sign me on!
Has any public service improved by the large scale expansion .I do not sense any great strides being made . The pendulum never swing completely right so let’s cut back and rehired if quality suffers.
managers to walk the plank and let the 2nd rate run it. oh arrr. flat corporate structure. where’s me 1st mate. lol. crack the whip ya mongrel.
Cap’n luxo runs a tight ship aye, me lads. always gunning for treasure and the hapless to rob. oh arrr. To the Port of Prosperity me pirates. up the yardarms. Ryn up the flag.
It starts at the top. We dont need as many ministerial portfolios as we have now. We dont need a mental health minister (effectively a minister for sad people), or a space minister, or a tourism minister.
100% correct.
We do not need this large number of ministries and government departments. It is plain stupid.
Complete nonsense.
As other recent events have shown, beat someone enough and they will take the stick off you and start beating you back.
We, and our AO/NZ are going to be sold to rich individuals. ACT is after the treaty and the pathetic natzo’s are going to convince the terminally stupid amongst us into becoming a republic.
I’ve just described our future in 34 words. Oh wait. I forgot these four other words. ” Thus, we’ll be fucked.”
David seemore has no kids and he is telling us what to do, this is way over the top. Sending sick kids to school effects the teachers and is not fair on the sick kid or the other kids who aren’t sick. I work with many mothers with young kids, and they are sick often from their kids coming home from school or their playcenters with germs.
But this is what dumb dumbs voted for so what do you expect.
It’s almost certainly a net economic drain.
But how can we expect the leadership of the ACT Party, who are only interested in ‘having kids’ in the biblical sense, to think about something like that?
Sending sick kids to school?
Is that the new policy.
Or are you talking about kids with mental health issues …… or those who believe that mental health is an excuse for every kind of deviant behaviour. (Shoplifting, wagging school, assault, theft, robbery….rape, murder…)
Most people in prisons have some sort of mental health issue, and are going without treatment. But lock-them-up rednecks like you dont give a shit, as long as we are locking people up, torturing them, or stringing them from lampposts.
Not many argue that.
But you are correct that there are sone who support your ideas.
If rehabilitation can work in one place it can also work in another location. I am always amazed when criminologists argue that we need more and better rehabilitation ….. as long as it takes place at their location of choice.
It’s a vicious circle. Some mums send sick children to pre-school or school because they can’t take time off work. A whole family can become crook, grandparents included. Good news though that Seymour has no children and let’s hope it stays that way.
PS One year I used all my sick leave and holiday leave caring for a child who later admitted he’d been faking half the time. Paid a student to child sit with food from my freezer, but I did manage to keep the seemingly sick at home. Not everyone can manage to do that.
Yes, I know what you mean Gentle Annie the point I was trying to make is seemore has no kids and if you have teenagers, they can wag school and you don’t know unless the busy school contacts you. It’s not that simple it can be complex. Yes, some people have no choice but to send their kids sometimes unwell to school it’s sad just like we have to go to work sometimes unwell and suck it up.
Agree. Kids wag school for all sorts of reasons, and not necessarily bad ones either, and, as you say, it’s very complex. Peer activities play a big part, and peer group are the big influence. Covid worsened everything, and Seymour’s meanness about free school lunches to help attract children to school is incomprehensible in this context. And bad.
Blaming parents is simplistic and unfair. Seymour, not being a parent is clueless about the dynamics involved here, and has no existential references he can relate to, and seems too narcissistic to know or care about this.
Most kids are ok, and most are lovely to work with. One of my children’s classmates ate a cake of soap at primary school, hoping that it would kill him so that he would die and go to heaven rather than
go to school the next day. I approached this same teacher who kept my child in during lunch breaks to rewrite his homework multiple times to improve his untidy printing. She invited me to speak in a private room, but I declined, and conversed in the classroom. She quit to become an air stewardess. Coincidentally, at another school, the teacher who regularly sent my young daughter out of the classroom for sucking her thumb, also quit to become an air hostess. The thing here, was that my child didn’t tell me what was going on at school, another little girl told me. I did not tell my mother some things until decades later. Kids are all different, mainly lovable, and folk need to keep telling this merciless government that every child counts.
” From National immediately passing anti worker, anti renter, anti Māori, anti environment legislation to fast track powers for trans national mining interests ”
Bomber you can add removing our protections from the Bill of Rights.
” The right to trial by jury is affirmed in the Bill of Rights Act. The National Party wants to take it off you: ”
” This is not the first time they’ve done this. We used to have the right to trial by jury in any case with a penalty of three months imprisonment. National took it off us in 2011, raising the threshold to two years (with the help of an unprincipled sell-out by Labour). Their argument back then was exactly the same: speed and “efficiency”. ”
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2024/04/efficiency-is-no-reason-to-violate.html
Our new government is using a top-down approach as they know best.
Covid is pa – Just like the last Labour Government
Except less democratic and already proving to be less transparent
Are you still assuming we who loath neo-liberalism remain unaware of the crippling fact that it was the traitor roger douglas and his right wing national party cronies pretending to be Labour from within it who infested Old Labour with their diseases? The Labour you sneeringly refer to in that kind of school yard nya-nya of yours is that the old Labour we watched get murdered back in 1984 is now merely a pink, stumpy, ghoulish national party appendage. A kind of Frankenstein’s monster’s ball bag full of stale National Party jizz.
Since 1984 specifically it’s been the national party all the fucking way man.
Now. Here’s what you can try. Try arguing a counter narrative. I fucking dare you.
Lets see what you got @ nathan? Put some wind where your piss is?
Farmers? Yes, you, you gorgeous, priceless lot. You’ve been bullshitted on a scale similar to not much that I can think of actually.
National Party? You’re just greedy, lazy arseholes. But we know that about you.
Labour. What the fuck are you? I watched, in this youtube clip, adern refusing to countenance a capital gains tax. That, right there says it all.
Taxing capital gains tax would in effect be money laundering so is that why Labour wouldn’t do it? For fear of taking [it] into the sphere of legitinacy therefore making the wholesale thievery of our primary industry an item of close inspection. Fuck! That’s it isn’t it! Oh my God! I’ve just hit on something. Oh. My. God.
Labour isn’t what it purports to be so if we take it all back several levels we must ask “What the fuck, then, is it?”
Inside New Zealand’s housing crisis
https://youtu.be/sF4z_3YLswE?feature=shared
Are you still assuming we who loath neo-liberalism remain unaware of the crippling fact that it was the traitor roger douglas and his right wing national party cronies pretending to be Labour from within it who infested Old Labour with their diseases? The Labour you sneeringly refer to in that kind of school yard nya-nya of yours is that the old Labour we watched get murdered back in 1984 is now merely a pink, stumpy, ghoulish national party appendage. A kind of Frankenstein’s monster’s ball bag full of stale National Party jizz.
Since 1984 specifically it’s been the national party all the fucking way man.
Now. Here’s what you can try. Try arguing a counter narrative. I fucking dare you.
Lets see what you got @ nathan? Put some wind where your piss is?
Farmers? Yes, you, you gorgeous, priceless lot. You’ve been bullshitted on a scale similar to not much that I can think of actually.
National Party? You’re just greedy, lazy arseholes. But we know that about you.
Labour. What the fuck are you? I watched, in this youtube clip, adern refusing to countenance a capital gains tax. That, right there says it all.
Taxing capital gains tax would in effect be money laundering so is that why Labour wouldn’t do it? For fear of taking [it] into the sphere of legitinacy therefore making the wholesale thievery of our primary industry an item of close inspection. Fuck! That’s it isn’t it! Oh my God! I’ve just hit on something. Oh. My. God.
Labour isn’t what it purports to be so if we take it all back several levels we must ask “What the fuck, then, is it?”
Inside New Zealand’s housing crisis
https://youtu.be/sF4z_3YLswE?feature=shared
Call The Government for what they are : The Crown.
Governments of various direction come and go but The Crown remains as lord and master.
Top down is all The Crown knows. It’s built into the Westminster system.
Wind your neck in, play the game and come out of it with a gong. There’s a good serf!
Dont get carried away about Cloud 9 alternatives.
At the risk of coming across as a know-it-all wanker but never the less I’m albeit reluctant to remind you that what ever the bald thing is isn’t a prime minister of a government. Since 1984 we’ve had no governance. Instead, we’ve simply had a coagulation of fiscal managers who managed our money into theirs and their lobbyists pockets for lobbyist enrichment and privilege and since, in return, favours were done and they must be seen to be enduringly done. An example of that would be since any and all previous pretences of gubbimints was lobbied by oily fingers fingering around the anus of our parliament they must continue to do so no matter the banner otherwise it makes the previous, current and any future gubbimint look like cheap dodgy cunts, which they are of course. Do you see any style or class in the Three Stooges coalition? No, of course you don’t. And that’s because there ain’t none.
Do you see a Norman Kirk in Labour? Do you see a Jack Marshall in National? Again, of course you don’t and that’s because they’re not there metaphorically writing or otherwise.
Once you grasp that dire fact, use your imagination and project us, our country and our economy into the future. What do you see? If you’re now under your bed crying and getting high you’re probably close to a vision of a future reality.
We’re going to be sold. All of us, and our AO/NZ will be sold. We’ll become Serfs. Slaves to corporate Terminators. The reason why I can write that with more confidence than I could use to describe any other scenario is because the hallmarks and sign posts are being erected as I write.
Since 1984 our taxes paid for infrastructure has been stealthily privatised so what was once ours to use for a stipend which strengthened us and kept us safe are now profit-factories fattening up the billionaires.
What do you think graeme hart? Do you think or do you just plug yourself in and hope for the best?
RNZ
‘Peter Jackson, Graeme Hart: The Kiwis that featured on Forbes Billionaires list’
“Graeme Hart, as usual, stands out by far as the richest New Zealander, with an estimated US$10.6 billion (NZ$17.7b) from his large packaging interests.
The publicity-shy Hart is ranked 1152 on the list, and has long held the title of New Zealand’s richest man, along with a back story of his rise from tow truck driver to billionaire through a series of debt funded corporate deals.
Last year, Hart took delivery of a 102-metre super yacht, Ulysses, fitted out with a hangar, helipad and glass stairways, among much else.”
Glass stairways aye? Wow. Graeme. Wow.
SBS dateline. : Inside New Zealand’s housing crisis
Farmers. Take particular note @ 21.05 of https://youtu.be/sF4z_3YLswE?feature=shared
Barren farm land aye. No use to anyone then. No need to eat when you can have a new iPhone.
I agree with the Wanker bit….
Idi Amin is a wanker… yes we all know that!
Are you insulting me @ idi amin?
You came here with six words. Is that all you have? Poor old dear.
the king of scotland was an arsehole—and so are you idi
Totally agree cip the Coalition Government knows best.
I’ve a solution for the authoritarian pollies and others of their ilk. It’s quite simple. Removal of their index fingers. With anaesthetic if you must, although there are alternatives. Could be followed by massive doses of estrogen if need be (funded by pharmac)
Spare the estrogen, the public service is skewed female nasty lefty authoritarians our bureaucracy are.
And you KCCO are a right wing narcissistic cock.
Rubbish Nathan one thing we know is every time national get in inequalities rise, not good governance not ruling for all but for some and mostly the rich. They sell our assets making us a poorer country. Now they are playing a divide and conquer game with our councils who are broke and would not want to pick a fight with Māori. I pay rates and I expect our council to step up, but the new government is bullying them at the moment knowing they are cash strapped.
Yes, I know what you mean Gentle Annie the point I was trying to make is seemore has no kids and if you have teenagers, they can wag school and you don’t know unless the busy school contacts you. It’s not that simple it can be complex. Yes, some people have no choice but to send their kids sometimes unwell to school it’s sad just like we have to go to work sometimes unwell and suck it up.
Tiger mountain, I think u will find that many younger voters ‘ the silent majority’ were not happy with the previous govt either.
I think you’ll be find they’ve been groomed by social media
Geez Marco
How YOUNG PEOPLE BENEFITED BY LABOUR – Song for Marco
Boosted funding for suicide prevention
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Delivered the biggest benefit boost in a generation, to help families with the cost of living
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Made the biggest ever investment in family violence and sexual violence support services
New legislation to put New Zealand on a path to a smokefree future
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Delivered the strongest ever protections to clean up our rivers and lakes
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Fixed Resource Management Act to better protect our environment
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Delivered the largest ever Police workforce, with 1800 new officers to keep communities safer
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
60,000 New Zealanders into the trades through Apprenticeship Boost
Boosted student loans and allowances by more than $100 a week
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
New schools and classrooms for 100,000 students
Reinstated the Training Incentive Allowance for higher-skill courses, supporting around 16,000 people to retrain
Launched and expanded Mana in Mahi, supporting employers to take on more than 5,000 apprentices
First year of study fees-free
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Expanding the Pregnancy and Parenting Programme, so more women and whānau can access support for alcohol and drug issues
Funding for night classes, to give more people opportunities to upskill .
Upgraded almost every state school in the country through the School Investment Package .
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
Scrapped the $5 prescription co-payment
Made visiting the doctor cheaper or free
Launched the Best Start payment, supporting parents with the costs of a newborn
Launched Ministry of Disabled People to improve outcomes for Kiwis with disabilities
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT, TREVOR!
Strengthened laws for addressing family violence by creating new offences and making victim safety the primary consideration in bail decisions
The Families Package, the biggest boost in household income in a decade for thousands of families
Extended paid parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks
Indexed main benefits to average wage growth for the first time in New Zealand’s history, to give those most in need a fair go
CHORUS: NOT FUCKING CANNED IT !
And there’s more …
Well Marco the right(eous), anything to add to your dislike of anything OToole offered?
I didn’t think so.
BUT transformational they were not.
The future is the Greens and Te Pati Maori
These bastards want to change the NZ history taught in schools because they dont want the kids to know that the farm that has been in the family for 150 years is actually stolen land .We cant have that can we ? as we want them to think that it was all bought and paid for with blankets and axes.
Show me a single substantive thing that the Ministry for Pacific Peoples has ever done for ….Pacific Peoples.
We thought Gliding On was a comedy, when in fact it was a training doco.
Andrew I ask the same question of the ACT party.
We thought Red Dwarf was a comedy, when in fact it was a training doco.
Thanks for this Martyn.
David Seymour’s idea that he can dispense advice on whether a child is sick or not, is massive Orwellian creep for the leader of a supposed small Government party.
western countries are increasingly looking like the old easternj bloc….EXCEPT they had social provisions…how is nz better than east germany?….and before any smartarse says stasi….we live in a surveillence state that would have made the stasi soil there thighty whiteys
‘Internal documents show Health Ministry chose to cut 134 jobs rather than trim executive salaries’.
Good thing we now have an authoritarian govt. We need one.
Good now all the recipients on executive salaries can take on all the work that all the staff made redundant used to do ….eh Jonzie.
They won’t of course.
Somehow the authoritarians will expect the existing staff to take on that work and be at the office a lot longer to cope with the extra work load with no pay increase to acknowledge all the extra work they will now pick up.
What gets me about Rimmer and Von Dracula of ACT is, they can’t string basic logic together due to their ideological purity.
Rimmers Truancy affectation could be quickly reduced just by offering a decent meal to kids who turn up but no, he’ll set up a police state to get the truants to school and make them starve when they get there. That’ll work – lol
And as for von Dracula, the Internal Affairs minister – just fucking useless – we have NZ citizens being trafficked to India as sex slaves and she doesn’t want any more bureaucracy to -err- co-ordinate bureaucracy. Isn’t that what the effing Internal Affairs is for? Such a lightweight – I reckon she got some priest love and liked it.
If you imagine that the abuse of state power is limited to the Gnats, you must have missed the imposition of trans nonsense, lacking any objective validity, under the previous government.
LGBT+ whatever is 3% (Aussie figures), Trans is 1 in 30 000. But they cheerfully abused the system to impose their fantasy on the greater public, without anything that could remotely be imagined to be a mandate.
This is all Labour cares about anymore – certainly not economic justice. And the Greens have the same disease. Well fuck them. This useless pack of hosers is the price we pay for Labour not doing their job for forty years.
Imposed it on the greater public? They imposed it on innocent school children, as part of the education curriculum, with children being taught that they can choose their own gender, and worse.
For goodness sakes snow, lay off the anti LGBT hate. We all know that you want this country to be like Russia and Hungary (now, not 40 years ago).
I read about a prominent composer who is transgender, She was born male in 1939, and started her transition in 1968. She said that she knew that she was born in the wrong body when she was 5 years old, ie 1944. They certainly didnt get taught back then that they could choose their own gender.
Have the rainbow crowd put NZ workers in houses and food on their children’s tables? No? Then they can fuck right off.
Labour have a job to do, and sexuality isn’t anything to do with it.
I have a science education and it offends me to the core of my being to see subjective nonsense enacted as policy.
… and I thought you loved fast tracked legislation with little or no democratic processes involved?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350231627/nz-politics-live-school-climate-protests-across-country
David Seymour has a low IQ as his reaction is the perfect result in why people strike during work hours.
Winners…the students
Loser….David Seymour
The only comment I’d like to make Martyn is that this Authoritarian government has not crept in, they have come in full guns blazing and even many of their supporters disagree with some of their policies.
The exquisititude of a crumb chop in prospect! Nowt better in my book.
I remember how you characterized Key’s govt. Over-doing it, when you have reality on your side, doesn’t help, rather hinders.
From a family of angry folk, for the people in one case, I appreciate fury. The cold rational — where are they ( in America and Corbyn)? We are in the age of checkable reality so we have to shoot down that lane. The increasingly Fascist Right is not here yet.