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  1. The seeming lack of cop and state security agency intelligence on what convoy factions were up to is mind boggling in the digital era.

    In analogue ‘81 Tour days, the cops often knew protest plans before “rank & file” protestors did, via the penetration of undercovers and snouts at top level in the movement.

    Mallard’s idiocy looks worse as time goes by, but that is minor compared to all the concerns over fall out from the convoy occupation.

    The challenge is to organise public action challenging the Govt. and capitalists from a left, rather than reactionary perspective.

    Ihumātao was an example of how to do things. John Minto and Alternative Aotearoa are one of the few campaigns (for a state house mega build) worthy of note at the moment-support it!

  2. Most countries’ problems are caused by its politicians. New Zealand is no exception. Mallard’s foolish provocation simply provides a very visible example of bad governance on which to focus.

    The IPCA inquiry which Ardern is piously citing does not emanate from government, it was instigated independent of government, by well over one thousand complainants. The logistics will ensure that it will take months, if not years, to investigate all these complaints.

    In using the IPCA investigation into the police as an excuse not to currently proceed with an independent inquiry, Ardern is playing for time in the expectation that when it is completed, the heat will have died down, and this occurrence down at Parliament will be forgotten, and ‘transparency’ can be redefined once more.

    No need for yet another costly Commission of Inquiry by the usual predictable sort of geriatrics either. A competent high level legal personage could do the job well. There may well be grounds for legal action against Parliamentary personages, and it’d be a much better look, an honest sort of look, if these were identified by a government instigated independent inquiry rather than by outliers, but right from the start, they’ve blown it.

    I know that some NZ Police used bad language, and we all know that they disrespected private property like tents and such things.

  3. Now that Michael Wood is doubling down and defending his description of protestors as a “river of filth”, it is becoming obvious that an inquiry into how and why politicians contributed to the disturbances at Parliament may be a matter of some urgency. It looks as if neither he nor Trevor Mallard can be relied upon to behave in a reasonable way, and their attitude towards sections of the New Zealand populace is unacceptable and counter-productive. Presumably the pair of them represent the view of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and this sort of negativity and hostility from the government towards the people who it purports to represent is as unhealthy as the virus and must be addressed. Shit-stirring then relying upon the police to protect them is no way to run a country already under stress.

  4. There will be accountability….. at the ballot box. The people will not forget how this was handled.

  5. So Mallard orders Parliament’s sprinklers turned on night and day against the demonstrators, Wood then complains about a river of filth, and the Greens say that they were planting herb gardens. None of this is amusing or appropriate activity in the Parliamentary precinct and bottom-feeder Luxon has got it right, for once, in calling for an independent inquiry.

  6. You made good points above, although I’m wondering if your real name is “F-bomber” Bradley 🙂

    This pandemic has revealed a democratic system that has proven not to be democratic. Democracy relies on trust, and so many policies and rules and individual actions from politicians and the supporting bureaucracy have destroyed that trust.

    Some of the actions seem so deliberately designed to destroy lives, livelihoods and businesses, under the guise of “the pandemic made me do it” seems to wear thin for me. Can people be that stupid consistently and not see the impact of these decisions create far worse problems?

    Maybe the failure to acknowledge the pandemic largely impacts 70yo+ dying “with” covid and other morbidities has allowed the media’s relentless hyping of the relative chance of death in healthy people to brainwash people into thinking we were dealing with Ebola rather than a serious flu.

    Even so, that pharma and government has turned this into an opportunity to require submission to regular medication as a condition of citizenship is chilling in the extreme. Even if we allow that this is necessary for safety today, there is nothing in the design of changing regulations that would prevent abuse of this in the future. If anything, any protections that were in place are being stripped away.

    Any safety valve, such as public discussion was clamped down and suppressed, on the basis that ANYTHING that questioned the narrative was a conspiracy theory and misinformation.

    This is one of the most chilling aspects of the pandemic – the collusion between media, government and the wokist left segment to enforce just one version of the truth and silence all others.

    This, and lack of accountability you highlight are the things that will speed the collapse of our society, although people will see the coming economic collapse as the cause, not the symptom.

    Did the protest drive me to the far right? No, but it picked up another supporter. Has it turned me into a conspiracy theorist? In today’s terms, yes. But that phrase is so broad, it is just a label to stop discussion when facing up to the mounting evidence that people and systems can’t be so stupid for so long. Although I’ve never experienced cult-like behaviour at such scale. Likening it to Germany 1936 is hard not to do, although the difference between 1936 and 1939 is lost on many.

  7. The main objective in any government inquiry is to set the frame of reference so as to avoid uncovering any embarrassing facts.

    Must I send you the box set of Yes Minister to educate you? 😉

  8. Come on this is an IPCA review. I hardly think that spells doom for police. This is the same authority that found unloading something like eight rounds at someone running away (from two officers)as “justified”

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