MEDIAWATCH: Q+A James Shaw’s wet blanket vs David Seymour’s dry sandpaper vs John Tamihere’s defence of cogovernance

James Shaw is on defending his spinelessness and decision to take the vacant baubles of Ministership.

The Greens are barely polling above what they gained in 2020, because they have no power in their Ministers and their alienating middle class activists are so toxic that we can’t gain support on environmental change post Cyclone Gabrielle.

The Climate Change Protest on Friday was as large a flop as this years 3000 turn out Pride Parade!

A pathetic 2000 climate protestors turned up in Auckland, a pathetic 2000 turned up in Wellington, 1000 in Christchurch, 500 in Dunedin with a a dozen other small tiny gesture protests elsewhere.

Pathetic and it reflects directly on the Greens.

How the fuck can Climate Change go from 170 000 on the streets in 2019 to less than 10 000 when climate change is showing what an existential threat it is?

How can the movement be so toxic when the need for change is so apparent?

What on earth could have happened between 2019 and now?

Why has a once popular movement plummeted?

Like The Pride Parade (that has gone from an event that once attracted 30 000 to 3000), the climate protest movement was taken over by radical woke activists who alienated everyone involved and killed it off.

In 2018, woke Trans activists seized control of the Pride Parade Board at a stacked meeting and promptly burnt every bridge the rainbow community had spent decades building. They decided to force the Police to dump their uniforms if the Police wanted to march in the Parade because police uniforms trigger the Trans community.

The Police had fought to win the right to wear their uniforms against the Police Hierarchy and so saw demands by the new woke Pride Board to dump their uniforms as blasphemy and promptly pulled out alongside everyone else who had spent decades building bridges with the rainbow community.

The woke proclaimed this a victory because now only the true believers were left.

30 000 to 3000 is victory according to the woke.

Likewise the climate change protest movement. It peaked in 2019 with 170 000, but collapsed after the exact same woke activism attacked the existing leadership structures.

In 2021, School Strike 4 Climate Auckland cancelled itself because it decided, thanks to woke dogma, critical race theory and critical gender theory, that they were racist and as such , they bewilderingly cancelled themselves.

I know, I know, I know.

You think I’m joking.

I’m not.

They honestly cancelled themselves and announced it…

Ummmm I’m not sure how to tell you this but the Woke just cancelled themselves?? School Strike 4 Climate Auckland Organization disbands because it’s too racist???

I honestly thought this was a parody but apparently it’s true. School Strike 4 Climate Auckland has disbanded because – wait for this – they are a racist organization???

The identity politics cult would eat their own young if they weren’t all vegan.

To disband a youth climate change organization because PoC suffer most from climate change ignores the fact that the planet will burn regardless of your fucking skin colour!!!

To whip themselves into such submission for an intersectionist cacophony of grievances competing for social hierarchy based upon woke dogma that all white people are intrinsically racist as a response to a burning planet is so intellectually bankrupt it’s terrifying.

Pure temple doctrine divides & alienates. Broadchurch universals build solidarity. This is self defeating identity politics madness.

Read it yourself, it’s just so unbelievable…

School Strike 4 Climate Auckland is disbanding as an organisation.
This is under the suggestion and guidance of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) members of our group, as well as individual BIPOC activists and organisations. We are not holding any more climate strikes in the Auckland region. Our members have also separated from the national SS4C team. Going forward, we will only be using our social media to uplift BIPOC-led climate justice spaces in Auckland.
BIPOC communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, so the fight for climate justice should be led by their voices and needs, not Pākehā ones.
We are disbanding because, since 2019, SS4C AKL (as well as the wider national group, though we can’t speak on their behalf) has been a racist, white-dominated space. SS4C AKL has avoided, ignored, and tokenised BIPOC voices and demands, especially those of Pasifika and Māori individuals in the climate activism space. As well as this, the responsibility and urgent need to decolonise the organisation has been put off for far too long. SS4C also delayed paying financial reparations for the work BIPOC groups/individuals within and alongside the group have done for this organisation in the past.
This is a non-exhaustive list.
We apologise for the hurt, burnout, and trauma caused to many BIPOC individuals, including current and past members, as well as BIPOC-led groups. We also apologise for the further trauma caused by our slow action to take responsibility. We recognise that this apology can never be enough to make up for our actions on top of years of systemic and systematic oppression, racism, and the silencing of those who are the most affected by climate change. This apology is just one of our steps in taking accountability for our actions.
Our disbandment is well overdue.
We acknowledge that our attitude has been racist and dismissive of the voices that have rightly spoken out against us and we apologise deeply for the pain we have caused. In saying this, we also need to acknowledge that racism is a big problem within the SS4C NZ team as well, but that we have made this decision independently from them.
We recommend you all redirect your support, resources and involvement to BIPOC activists, spaces and causes, especially those that are led by Pasifika and Māori people. This includes groups such as 4TK ( 4TK), Pacific Climate Warriors ( Pacific Climate Warriors – Auckland ), Para Kore Ki Tāmaki ( PARA KORE KI TĀMAKI), Protect Mataharehare ( Protect Mataharehare ), Protect Pūtiki ( Protect Pūtiki), Save Canal Road Native Trees ( Save Canal Road Native Trees ), Te Ara Whātu ( Te Ara Whatu).

If you are a BIPOC-led climate/social justice organisation or a BIPOC climate/social justice activist, please let us know if/how we can help by messaging our Instagram, Facebook, or emailing aklschoolstrike4climate@gmail.com. We will uplift your kaupapa and Mahi through this platform, or any other means available to us.
The climate justice space must be led by BIPOC groups and others who are disproportionately affected by climate change. In Aotearoa, this especially means Māori and Pasifika groups.
We fully discourage any future and current Pākehā-led groups from occupying the space we leave behind.
—
School Strike 4 Climate Auckland

…I love that at the end they threaten any group from stepping into this space. They enjoy all the nuance of a Maoist purge.

Twitter outrage is woke righteousness porn for the middle classes. A puritanical razoring where the self elected morality police publicly shame and cancel anyone for not using the language protocols of the conclave. That they are now detonating themselves for the cause seems a tad driven and wide eyed.

I haven’t seen wilful self mutilation like this since the 2020 National Party election campaign.

The climate crisis is the largest existential threat we face as a species – to divide and amputate protest against that for some middle class identity politics struggle session is so incredibly misguided.

The polluters who cause climate change must be laughing.

The woke and their pure temple politics have killed off Broadchurch solidarity.

There should have been 1 million people on the streets on Friday. Barely 10 000 showed up from a height of 170 000.

James Shaw has no answer to any of this because his incrementalism is part of the problem. The last 2 months of catastrophic weather has highlighted how pitiful being carbon neutral by 2050 really is.

David Seymour is on defending his climate change denial. Rodney Hide argued that Climate Change was a hoax in 2008. In 2016 ACT were arguing NZ is not warming at all. That is a lie. Watching David squirm as Jack feeds his climate denial back to him is gorgeous.

David argues we need Margaret Thatcher era ‘economic zones’ where there is no regulation and the free market rebuilds.

Seeing as under regulated capitalism was the problem here, more if it is madness!

Cyclone Gabrielle has fundamentally changed the political debate in New Zealand.

Since Rogernomics, the neoliberal experiment has cut the NZ State back to the bone and the Right’s political agenda ever since has been to starve the State of revenue so there is no political expectation of redistribution.

The enormity of the storm damage and the ongoing threat that rapid climate change causes forces an entirely different perspective politically, economically and culturally.

This is now the age of consequences.

Business as usual simply can’t work.

Bernard Hickey argues that even if we agree to the neoliberal Wellington Consensus of 30% GDP debt, we could still borrow $60Billion and remain within that absurd ideological economic straight jacket so where should that $60billion be spent on resilience and adaptation?

We need future proofing ideas, we need a Ministry of Works to do it, we need big ideas and we need big new taxes to fund those big ideas, we need to build in self sufficiency, we need mitigation and adaptation.

Unlike Covid, whose worst was avoided, this Cyclone damage is real world and physical. The magnitude of what is required from the State politically resets National and ACT’s small Government agenda.

No one wants to hear about amputating the State when they are running to the State for protection.

This was the exact same mistake the Right made last time with Covid.

The Rights usual slash and burn of the State simply isn’t sustainable in face of how invested the State is going to have to be in the rebuild.

Big ideas are needed, and Labour should use the MMP majority they still enjoy to force through some desperately needed regulation over the Forestry Industry, Trucking Industry, Telecommunications Industry, and the Industries who are emitting the gasses that are ultimately driving this catastrophic climate change.

We need to build resilience into a new infrastructure landscape that is urgently implemented with radical policies.

This is the age of consequences now, we will either chose our direction or be forced by the weather events themselves to blindly scramble.

There is the change for another Cyclone this season before April.

This election year is about State capacity.

National and ACT want to slash 14 000 public sector jobs, 5 Ministries and the Human Rights Commission. The political project of the Right is to strangle off State revenue so it doesn’t have the money to redistribute.

The Left’s response is universal services, a tax system that moves the yoke from workers onto corporations, Banks and the wealthy alongside a State with far greater capacity.

We don’t just need more Drs and Nurses, we need more hospitals and ambulances too. We need more teachers, more schools, more, prisons, more corrections staff, more military, more police, more universal free services.

Argue for a State that has the capacity to build our resilience while preparing us for a different world, economy and culture.

As we struggle to comprehend the impact of climate change in front of us, it is clear we are in desperate need of legislative regulation.

Here are some starters:

 

REGULATE 2DEGREES, VODAFONE, SPARK:

The Government must immediately look an an omnibus of legislative change as we rapidly move to adaptation and one of those new focuses should be on the Telecommunications industry and force them to spend to upgrade the resilience of our communications network.

They managed to build a cheap network, addicted us to their services and then failed completely at our most critical time.

Instead of building resilience into their systems, they have a mere 4-8hours battery system.

Not one Radio tower was knocked out. Not one!

2Degrees was making $30million in profit in 2020 before the made a Billion dollar merger with Orcon!

Vodafone turns over $2billion a year while Spark tuns over almost $4billlion, yet these greedy fucks can’t build resilience into a telecommunications network they have addicted us to!

They all pay lip service to resilience but have built their empires off the back of the cheapest network possible and it has had real life real world consequences.

Regulate them now!

 

STOP COUNCILS FROM BUILDING ON FLOODPLAINS:

The Greedy Developers and the lazy Councils have sold tens of the thousands down the drain!

This was the following statement from National Party Candidate and former Auckland Councillor Cameron Brewer in the wake of the Auckland Floods:

 

…Auckland councillor Shane Henderson, representing West Auckland where there was a lot of flood damage, says “We have locked out people from building on the best land in the city. We have to confront this.”

He is right.

We can no longer allow intensification to be dominated by those with the wealth to keep the poor out.

Bypass this nonsense, cease the golf courses under the Public Works ACT and build State Housing and owner occupier affordable housing on them while building the infrastructure to them.

 

New Drainage rules for small companies: 

Chippy needs to refocus 3 Waters on drains and promote more work to be done by small drain layer companies by ensuring 15% of drain contract procurements go to independent/small Drain companies.

Currently the large players choke off the small companies and the work doesn’t get done!

Once again the under regulated drainage industry is allowing price gouging and that means we won’t get the repairs done.

FORESTRY SLASH:

The Greedy Forest owners have had it too good for too long. Not only do they get to kill workers while paying them remarkably cheap rates, not only did they get the weight lifted on trucks to damage our road so they can hock logs off to China but they also get to destroy our infrastructure with slash!

It’s time to get medieval on these pricks with vast new costs to clean up their mess!

The newly announced investigation shows they have lost their social licence.

 

Emergency Management Bill:

Right now, the Emergency Management Bill is stalled in Parliament because the Labour Government are concerned the co-governance elements in the Bill that will enable and resource Marae will be seized upon by National and ACT as another dog whistle to spook the electorate…

Emergency management generally garners cross-party consensus in Parliament, but the Government’s effort to legislate for Māori participation in emergency management governance in the bill promises to be politically fraught. The Opposition has routinely attacked Labour’s work on co-governance between the Crown and Māori.

…this concern for political narrative may be strategic, but tactically it has left Marae without the agency to face the very challenges they are now enduring.

Many Marae are located in places because of very specific culturally important factors. Moving them would be traumatic. Where we can, Marae should stay where they are and get repaired with extra resourcing to ensure they are points of resilience in those communities.

Universal Left

Let’s ensure taxation is targeted at the corporates and the wealthy while subsidising the costs of the poorest.

1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help.

2: 50 000 State Homes for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs.

3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.

4: Doubling welfare payments and student allowances minus any bullshit claw backs from MSD plus Living Wage universally adopted as minimum working wage.

5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health.

6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.

7: Debt cancellation – student loans, welfare overpayments, beneficiary debt, easier debt cancellation.

8: Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements) 

9: Buy out houses that can’t be saved, look at universal insurance for climate change events to cover those with no insurance, survival packs in every home, solar panels on every roof, vast increase in Civil Defence equipment, social licence of essential service resilience.

10: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances. 

 

Don’t tell me we can’t afford any of this because we can if the wealthy are taxed!

There are 14 Billionaires in NZ, let’s start with them, then move to the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.

There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!

-Sugar Tax

-Inheritance Tax

-Wealth Tax

-Financial Transactions Tax

-New top tax rate on people earning over $300 000 per year.

-Capital Gains Tax

-Windfall profit taxes

-First $10 000 tax free

The Reserve Bank Governor is clearly telling us to raise taxes to pay for the rebuild, if Chippy’s Bread and Butter politics is to mean anything, he has to tax the rich to pay for the rebuild.

David thinks the people are dumb enough to slash the State right when they need it most!

2023 will be fought over the capacity of the State, the Right want to cut it back, the Left want to boost it.

John Tamihere is on and is once again explaining to angry reactionaries that co-governance is stewardship not ownership (while pointing out Māori own the water anyway).

Points out Government allocates water use, not ownership.

Argues that we have no option but to work together because we have to.

Points out Census hasn’t engaged with Māori and will fail with a significant undercount.

Another great show from Q+A.

 

 

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