In 1943, NZs Ambassador to America, Sir George Laking, reflected on the surprising ability of the NZ Government to pass authoritarian powers against the citizens of NZ with little to no resistance from Kiwis by saying, “Much that was accomplished in those early years was possible only because of the absence of any detailed or sustained public interest in the issues”.
We have become experts in a hyper laid back culture of turning a blind eye.
You have become so easily led Kiwis, the right wing astro turf organisations use culture war issues to rage bait your petty bigotries into an ‘All Tribe No Village’ political landscape where they strangle the common good for their corporate masters interests and you are dumb enough to get played.
Looking back on the Year, my 10 political lowlights of 2025 were:
10: The character assassination of Benjamin Doyle:
Green MP Benjamin Doyle was hounded out of Office based on allegations and insinuations that they were abusing their child and was actively promoting their child to other abusers.
Jesus fucking wept!
And the ‘evidence’ for such an extreme allegation and insinuation? A blue squiggly line that was supposedly pedophilic hieroglyphics and the word ‘bussy’.
That such a false insinuation could be made is a tragedy of hysteria fuelled by a malicious online Lynch mob.
Everyone who played a part in this should be deeply ashamed of themselves.
9: Banning Puberty Blockers:
I absolutely agree that there needed to be more checks and balances on Puberty Blocker use…
…and the Cass Review successfully argued that there needed to be more research into puberty blockers, but the Cass Review also took into account the regret of those who had surgically transitioned and that’s just not something we have a hell of a lot of in NZ. Puberty Blockers alongside other treatments are the main ‘transitioning’ in NZ, where as the Cass Review had to take into account the growing number ion mostly young women who had transitioned surgically.
The reality is we don’t have the problems the UK had because we don’t have that many surgical transitions.
So yes, we need more research into puberty blockers and how they impact while limiting surgical transition to only those who truly require it, but what the Government has done here isn’t a medical decision, it’s a political one.
Only you, your guardian, your psychologist and your dr should be involved in this discussion, what the fuck is the Government doing getting involved in medical care?
This is about using the resentment the middle class woke have generated and manufacturing that into a toxic culture war political attack on the trans community for the lowest gutter politics dog whistling.
This Government doesn’t give a shit about Trans Kids, they care about dog whistling to their reactionary right voters while pretending to care about Trans kids.
I am the first to argue that the way the Trans and their woke middle class allies have gone about trying to secure their rights has been counterproductive and deeply alienating, but we can’t allow their idiocy to doom an entire group of people.
This is a political culture war attack and the State shouldn’t be deciding your medical needs, that’s between you and your dr!
8: Implosion of te Pati Māori:
From the highs of 6 electorate seats, 7% in the polls and the stunning by-election win, they have become a train wreck that has smashed into a school bus that has exploded into a pet store of 3 legged puppies.
Here is my understanding.
Factions inside the Māori Party mistook the incredible support for the protests against the Treaty Principles Referendum as support for their brand of Tikanga.
That generated a desire within this faction to articulate their brand of Tikanga, a desire which was extinguished by the Leadership who were focused on metamorphosing from being a party of opposition activists into a credible partner in a supply and confidence arrangement to replace this terrible Government.
The extinguishing of this desire to express a Party of Tikanga twisted feelings and we saw egos put ahead of the waka and the airing of dirty laundry in front of the Marae.
The moment JT realised there was a challenge to the leaders brewing because these factions didn’t feel Debbie and Rawiri were ‘Tikanga enough’, (in the same way woke factions inside the Greens didn’t think their leadership was ‘woke enough), Tamihere responded with napalm.
Debbie and Rawiri deserved loyalty, not plotting.
Tarsh Kemp’s own text messages challenged Maraimeno’s assertions for crying out loud!
The level of self mutilation once mana is impinged is Cracker level toxic privilege.
Māori Party + Greens + Labour would be the most transformative Government since the Michael Savage Government.
7: How the State abused victims of historic state abuse:
The Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill (2025) introduced by this Government seeks to disqualify victims of state abuse who have gone on to commit criminal acts and have been imprisoned.
When you consider 80% of Mongrel Mob and Black Power Gangs members were abused in State Care.
When you consider 20000 kiwi kids were abused in State Care.
When you consider the despicable tactics used by the State to legally discredit, demonise and demean victims of State care.
When you consider all that, seeing the Government try to save money from the compensation package by disqualifying victims of state abuse who have then committed criminal acts manages to add insult to so much injury.
Who the fuck have we become in just 2 short years under this Government?
6: The Regulatory Standard Bill:
The Regulatory Standards Bill represents the greatest trojan horse for corporate power in NZ Political history.
It will allow corporations to vet legislation using a very narrow libertarian interpretation of property rights over human rights.
It is dangerous and will have an immediate strangulation on democracy.
The extreme right want these powers to stop environmental legislation from catching up to their climate changing crimes.
Just so we are clear.
The Consultation time for a law as enormous as the Regulatory Standards Bill had a tiny window open over the holidays, and of the 20 000 submissions, barely .3% agreed with it!
Submitters oppose David Seymour’s regulation law. Why he’s charging forward anyway
David Seymour is intending to turn “up the heat on bad lawmaking” with a new piece of legislation outlining principles of good regulatory practice and establishing a board to keep politicians accountable for any red tape they impose.
A discussion document on the proposal drew significant attention over summer, pulling in more than 20,000 submissions. It coincided, however, with Seymour’scontentious Treaty Principles Bill also being out for public feedback, itself receiving a record number of submissions.
A just-released summary of that feedback found 88% of submitters opposed the bill, with just 0.33% supporting or partially supporting it. The rest didn’t have a clear position.
…only .3% supported out because it is such an egregious abuse of democratic power in favour of corporate power!
It is Property Rights over Human Rights!
ACT have tailored an economic straight jacket that will make it impossible to counter corporate interests ever again.
Corporations will now be able to stop any environmental or taxation policy they don’t like.
The radical nature of this should terrify every New Zealander. It is a hand-break for corporate interests and a gag for democratically elected change.
We require regulated capitalism not free market fantasies!
This is a blatant power grab by those fearful climate change will provoke electoral demands they don’t want to pay for!
Why on earth are we placing democratic break peddles on legislation the people have mandated by popular vote?
The Regulatory Standards Bill is an ideological vanity project…
While all the media and popular coverage seems to have been directed towards the Treaty Principles Bill, David Seymour and Act are poised to achieve another substantive victory that has been over 20 years in the making.
The Regulatory Standards Bill, first introduced to Parliament in 2006 and reintroduced last year by Seymour in his role as the Minister for Regulation, is under the public consultation phase (quietly started on the day of the arrival of the hikoi in Wellington).
It will be taken up by parliament in early 2025.
As detailed by Melanie Nelson, the passage of this bill (an agreement in the coalition Government’s negotiations) will help Act to realise a longstanding goal of their neoliberal policy agenda, which is to enshrine the rights of individuals, particularly property holders and business owners, over the collective good of all New Zealanders.
“The focus on the Treaty Principles Bill risks overshadowing its dull but dangerous cousin, the Regulatory Standards Bill, which is currently open for consultation,” she writes. “The Regulatory Standards Bill is the brainchild of the Business Roundtable (now the New Zealand Initiative) and has been attempted three times previously by the Act Party.”
If passed, the bill will establish a hand-picked regulatory board to ensure that law-making complies with its regulatory “principles” and to deal with complaints of violations (the public can even call in their complaints via a newly established tip line).
NZs crony under regulated capitalism is forever being deregulated by donors to the Political Right (and at times the Left).
ACT and National have gutted MBIE because MBIE employs the people who regulate New Zealand’s poorly policed and under regulated capitalism!
We see this time and time and time again, State regulators who are supposedly policing the under regulated markets with barely enough staff to look into anything at all!
ACT and National’s bullshit dismantling of Capitalism’s police while expanding Corporate power tells you all you need to know about the deregulated hellscape a National/ACT monstrosity wants to birth into this world!
Creating a Board of Corporate Warlords to vet all legislation to ensure it doesn’t impact their property rights is so crazy.
5: Siding with the War Criminals:
Our collective mana has been damaged beyond belief by these scumbag cowards.
By refusing to recognise Palestine, NZ is on the side of Genocide and war criminals.
David Seymour has built an illegal settlement on the balls of the Prime Minister and we all have to pretend that’s an independent foreign policy.
4: Sell out to Corporate Farmers:
New Zealand was hit by catastrophic and extreme weather events as the reality of climate change continues to erupt upon us whether we believe in it or not.
The disconnect between these extreme weather events and the Government’s war on the environment is beyond the media’s capacity to comprehend and articulate.
The total capture of the environmental agenda by Corporate Dairy, Mining, Property Developers and Big Pollution shows how willing National are to strangle off the common good for their donor’s interests.
After cutting hundreds of millions from climate funds, gerrymandering the climate commission and listening only to Corporate Farmers, we have a Methane deal locks us into catastrophic global warming.
I think there is a real danger here that the next wave of environmental activism stops being street based outrage and starts becoming cell group militant sabotaging of the infrastructure that enables this pollution.
3: McSkimming scandal:
I’ve never really understood this Country’s authority worship of cops.
When Green MP Tamatha Paul suggested earlier this year that some parts of the community didn’t feel safe with the Police, the entire establishment erupted in calls against her for daring to imply the Police weren’t the greatest group of blokes in the entire Southern Hemisphere and that such talk was bordering on witchcraft.
Those voices so quick to criticise Tamatha are all very quiet post McSkimming’s aren’t they?
Comrades – 90% of my interactions with NZ Police have been negative and I have witnessed first hand their abuse of power, underhand tactics and out right corruption.
When it comes to the pigs, I’m Jewish and Muslim.
Don’t get me wrong.
First responders? Heroes
Fireman? Heroes
Ambulance staff? Heroes.
People who wake up each day saying, “I am the law! Respect my authority” – they need some oversight.
I think NZ has a cultural hangover from our settler days.
The NZ Police Force grew out of the Mounted Constabulary, a thug force who was ostensibly put together to go bash the bejesus out of drunk Māori at the edge of the settlement.
The unspoken deal between white settler NZ and the Mounted Constabulary was, ‘we will turn a blind eye to whatever heavy handed tactics you want to use, as long as you make us feel safe’.
That mindset of turning a blind eye to Police tactics to protect us from our fears of the things that go bump in the night has extended all the way from our settler culture to today.
I have been banging on for decades now that the IPCA simply does not have the investigative powers, the resources or the legislative structure to provide appropriate oversight of the NZ Police, (criticisms I might add that have been responded to as sacrilege and heresy for most of the time I have been making them), well after McSkimmings and all that has been revealed there, it seems like most rational people now see the enormous need for an Independent guard dog against Police corruption.
Remember – there is no depression in NZ, or corruption and we don’t know how lucky we are.
2: Knee capping of Pay Parity:
You’ve got to hand it to the Minister for Handmaids, Brooke Van Velden, Girlfriend just wants it more!
As a woman who turns on other working woman, Brooke loves blood as much as your average hungry Great White Shark!
The details of how this hard right Government kneecapped the pay parity deal to literally rob workers so they could give a tax break to the bosses, has come out now and the dirty tactics involved to screw over our poorest workers were obscene…
Use of urgency to upend pay equity scheme decided after PM’s meeting with senior ministers
New documents reveal the Government’s use of urgency to rush through controversial changes to the country’s pay equity scheme wasn’t decided until after a high-powered meeting between the Prime Minister and senior ministers.
A document dump yesterday from several government agencies provides an insight into the Government’s shock decision in May to amend the Equal Pay Act, which ministers claimed created a fiscally unsustainable pay equity scheme as changes saved almost $13 billion over the next four years.
The changes, which stopped 33 live pay equity claims, raised the threshold for claims to be made and limited the job types workforces could use as comparators when arguing inequity.
The amendments announced by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden had not been publicly forecast, and the Government used urgency to pass the bill through the House, meaning no public consultation was done.
Now, documents released yesterday showed urgency hadn’t been raised by officials in the months of preparation through 2024 before potential reform.
Urgency first appeared after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met with van Velden, Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Public Service Minister Judith Collins between 9pm and 10pm on March 4 this year.
Documents showed the meeting had been set by Luxon’s office, overriding plans van Velden’s office had to speak with Collins and Willis about the changes around the same time.
Publicly, ministers argued that urgency was warranted to ensure claims were judged under the same conditions.
Briefings to van Velden from Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials in February said there had been “limited testing and analysis” of the changes due to the “short timeframe to develop proposals”.
“There remains the risk of the changes not achieving the policy intent and unintended consequences arising once the bill has been passed,” officials warned.
Officials acknowledged that altering the pay equity scheme in such a way would likely be “contentious” because it would retrospectively remove people’s rights and override some aspects of existing settlements.
They also advised secrecy until after the bill was introduced because it risked a large increase in the number of claims lodged.
…the Government lied to you about the need for urgency and kept it secret to minimise our ability to fight it!
They robbed Paula to pay Paul!
It’s the exact opposite of Robin Hood! This Government steals from the poor to give to the rich and do it in secret so you don’t know!
1: Draconian welfare sanctions and predictability of Homelessness
There are many things that manage to symbolise the venal corruption of this Government.
The bastardisation of the school lunches programme into cheap slop.
The IREX Ferry fiasco.
The gutting of public health by a smiling man child.
Smashing Labour’s infrastructure pipeline that created a cascade collapse across the economy.
Desperately needed public housing standing empty.
$12billion for military helicopters while knee capping pay parity.
The total capitulation to corporate interests via the Regulatory Standards Act
Undermining workers safety while the Pike River Mine movie opened.
The totally needless and counter productive hate fest spawned by the Treaty Principles Referendum.
The war on climate legislation as NZ gets hit by extreme weather.
The cutting of benefits for people while giving the worst industries hundreds of millions in corporate welfare.
Refusing compensation to survivors of state abuse if they have gone to prison.
Refusing to recognise Palestine and siding with the war criminals.
And the final example that manages to symbolise the venal corruption of this Government, is their entire response to the homelessness problem that they have created.
Everyone in the homelessness sector told the Government that their revised thresholds for Emergency Housing would create a tsunami of homelessness.
Everyone in the homelessness sector said cutting $20million from food banks would make those homeless more desperate.
Everyone in the homelessness sector said cutting back on community outreach programmes for the homeless would mean those homeless had no access to off ramps via wrap around services.
Number of under 16s sleeping rough ‘much larger than we’d first anticipated’
Young people are sleeping on the streets and in cars as a youth homelessness support service says the problem is getting worse.
Auckland-based Kick Back has released its first State of the Street report, which it says is an SOS to the government and community at large.
“And what we’ve observed is children couch-surfing, sleeping in and out of transitional housing or hostels, moving around constantly,” general manager Aaron Hendry said.
The report comes up with hard figures, the first Kick Back has been able to show in a report like this.
It revealed 22 percent of young people were sleeping rough when they first sought support.
Couch-surfers made up 22 percent, 12 percent were sleeping in cars while 27 percent were living in housing classed as unstable, overcrowded or insecure.
The report said 62 percent of young people turning to the organisation for help were under 19 years old.
Sixteen and 17 year olds made up 20 percent, and 17 percent were aged 15 or under.
Despite everyone telling them this, National fucking did it all anyway resulting in an obscene spike in homelessness to the point their poverty, addiction and mental health issues explode shamefully across our streets in a way that embarrasses us in front of the Tourists.
So embarrassed are they by the realities of their policy cruelty they now put forward a solution to simply arrest the homeless.
Firstly, shouldn’t National, ACT and NZF voters be confronted with the grim reality of their social policies as they walk around?
Secondly, shouldn’t the Government be heavily, heavily, heavily criticised for promoting criminalisation of the poverty they themselves have manufactured?
Where does Chris Luxon, who is one of the richest Politicians in NZ, who got an $8000 rates reduction for his million dollar batch on Waiheke and who has personally profited $600 000 from flipping property after he changed the rules, that Chris Luxon, where does he get off arresting the homeless that he has created?
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Hate generation at its best .
Luxon has pretensions of being elevated to Royalty. At the moment he’s a Count.