The Infamous Daily Blog Media Awards 2021

2021, a year that went to hell in a hand-basket and had us all on Netflix when we weren’t checking in for the daily Delta briefings and whatever latest crazy threat Qanon antivaxxers were terrifying us with. Anything good was eclipsed by the plague and the media managed to make themselves loved and hated at the same time.

Here are the infamous TDB 2021 Media awards*.

Best Broadcaster 2021

Ryan Bridge

I’ve always been a TVNZ Breakfast viewer, John Campbell leads a news team that is incisive & warm,  but this year it’s more Spin-off TV pomposity mixed with Stuff’s bewildering sense of self importance with a dash of RNZ supremacy.

It’s like a private kindergarten that sells itself on its inclusive yoga program.

Ever since TVNZs terribly woke election night coverage, the network has become insufferably smug.

I never warmed to Duncan Garner on The AM Show, but sweet Jesus how good is Ryan Bridge?

His fixed interview spots with Jacinda, Judith and Grant have been genuinely great!

He gets real answers out of politicians and I learn things from the interviews that the talking points on RNZ, Stuff & TVNZ miss.

Most interviewers have set questions with maybe a follow up, Ryan listens to the answers and is quick enough to use those in his next question.

He’s made The AM Show politically relevant again, and I switch them on before Breakfast on TVNZ now.

 

Best Interview 2021

Te Ao with Moana: Willie Jackson vs Simon Bridges on Gangs

Easily the greatest interview this year was the always brilliant Moana interviewing Willie and Simon on gangs.

It provided real debate and a free flowing argument that allowed so much insight to be shed on gangs that it should be compulsory viewing for any politician before commenting on crime.

Māori TV did the nation an enormous service for broadcasting this and shame on mainstream media for ignoring it!

Best Public Broadcaster 2021

John Campbell: Anger, Anxiety and Us

Every time my black cynical splinter of a heart wants to turn TVNZ off, John’s brilliance at being a public broadcaster with the talent to engage in a mana enhancing story telling way, pulls me right back in.

His special on the angry times we are in did more to provide insight, oversight and genuine healing than the rest of the media combined.

This is John at his most important, navigating the real and sustaining us all.

The guy is a national treasure.

Worst Broadcaster 2021

Mike Hosking

How many times could he get it wrong? He screamed open the borders, shut the borders, open and shut the borders!

Mike can’t help but scream the opposite of what Jacinda says, so he became a kind of conjoined twin in a symbiotic death match for attention that he was endlessly losing.

His coverage of Politics was this endless promise that the Government would collapse next week.

It was like Apocalypse Now but with fewer choppers and more napalm.

Mike is the voice of hard right NZ, a self aggrandising societal segment of rich white male privilege plus those who want rich white male privilege all wrapped up with a smug sense of entitlement only 100 years of living in Wellington could ever achieve.

These are the New Zealanders who have benefitted most from neoliberalism and see their personal success as self driven  and proof positive of their own superiority.

That Mike has been forced to backtrack on his call to ban Jacinda is probably the greatest indicator that the electorate has seismically shifted in a way even Mike is intimidated by.

Today FM will give him a run for his money.

Happy Days.

 

Worst Public Broadcasting 2021

Gower on Hate

His first doco on Weed probably killed off the referendum (thanks Paddy), his second doco on meth at least highlighted the impact of South American cartels but his third doco on Hate ended up feeling like a taxpayer funded group therapy session.

He spent less time demanding accountability from the Intelligence agencies and a lot of time talking to victims who can’t provide the answers.

He allowed Jacinda to gloss over the horrific failure of intelligence by glibly referring to their official white wash security inquiry as if that’s an answer!

Surely he should have had representatives from the following:

• The SIS (Secret Intelligence Services)
• The GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau)
• The NSG (National Security Group)
• The Police Intelligence Unit
• The CNSN (Cabinet National Security Committee)
• The ODESC (Officials’ Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination)
• The SIB (Security and Intelligence Board)
• The CTCC (Counter-Terrorism Coordinating Committee)
• The NICC ( National Intelligence Coordination Committee)
• The IAD (Intelligence and Assessments Directorate)
• The NRU (National Risk Unit)
• The NSPD (National Security Policy Directorate)

That is the entire infrastructure of the State who are tasked with keeping us safe from mass murder terror events. They cost us over $150million each year. Are you feeling safe yet?

Surely any documentary trying to understand why a white supremacy terror attack occurred here must start with how the Australian terrorist gained a gun licence, how the entire security apparatus missed that, how the terrorist shot himself and still didn’t come to anyone’s attention or how numerous complaints were made from his gun club.

The GCSB caught this maniac downloading white supremacy material but couldn’t be bothered searching for who downloaded it.

Rachel Stewart could have her guns taken after the Woke manufactured one of her tweets into a threat – how did Tarrant manage to do all this and still buy more guns?

At least Jacinda acknowledged our entire Intelligence Apparatus are biased and Patrick rightly highlights the social media algorithms that radicalise.

81% of referrals to Molyneux were generated by the algorithms, not actual people.

Paddy touches on all this, but gets sucked into the identity politics shtick and plays into the Woke dogma that the Christchurch atrocity occurred because of white people.

His decision to shut down the film ‘They Are Us’ because he felt guilty over the Southern & Molyneux interview makes more sense from a personal point of view and that’s probably the best that can be said about this doco.

Gower on Hate is a personal emotional counselling session that allows the pain and trauma of this terrible event to mainstream its grief. Because Paddy can’t get the real answers from our security system he internalises the guilt and blames himself.

This documentary allows the NZ Intelligence Apparatus off the hook and turns the issue into a personal crusade for guilty white people to do better.

The gleaming certainty that the next terror attack will be white supremacy because white heteronormative cis male privilege seemed smug. Days after the doco played, an ISIS terrorist walked into New Lynn mall and committed a terror attack by stabbing 6 people.

Technically can we get our NZ on Air funding back?

Dirty Politics Award for Malice 2021

Smearing Dr Siouxsie Wiles: Dirty Politics Judith Collins edition

Judith uses creepy stalker footage off Slater’s new hate blog to smear Dr Siouxsie Wiles, an academic who has been crucial in the public health messaging to keep us safe during a fucking pandemic!!!

Best Netflix 

Squid Games 

Squid Game has been wrongly labeled a South Korean drama when it’s more like a North Korean documentary on Late Stage Capitalism.

There are the wage slaves so desperately in debt that they are willing to play deadly games for a shot at wealth staffed by homicidal lunatics who see this as the free market at its purest.

While the debt proletariat die in lethal children’s games, hyper billionaire capitalist sociopaths watch from a velvet draped naked human furniture Eyes Wide Shut buffet room.

Gambling on Human suffering is the last kick jaded cynical Capitalist Gods get anymore.

The final twist is that even at that level of Caligula styled  depravity, one of the Capitalist Gods has to enter the game for the brief charade of human authenticity.

Hyper Capitalism becomes a drug whose next hit demands a never ending high greater than the one before, so much so that the master must become the debt proletariat to feel something again.

Best TV

Succession

The brutal and hilarious story of a family power struggle was as chaotic as the National Party succession fight but with less back stabbings and more deaths.

The ‘Sure, but I had to wait three quarters of an hour for a Gin and tonic, so who is the real victim here’ moment is so cruel and funny it must surely be the TV burn of the year.

 

Worst woke reviews 2021

NZ Herald review of the cancellation of Dave Chappelle

Dave’s crime was holding the woke to their own snarling standards but in a far more clever and funny manner.

As an artist he has every right to direct his craft where he wants, that’s the power of comedy, but he makes an argument about the feral aggressiveness of the Trans debate that critics refuse to acknowledge.

The irony of the Left attempting to deplatform a black comedian who has spent a career attacking white power structures is beyond the woke.

Dave Chappelle is an artist, he is intelligently insightful and prepared to challenge all power structures, including the current woke schism.

That Netflix staff themselves protested is akin to librarians helping book burners.

Look at the language of catastrophe that justifies cancelling Chappelle’s thought crimes…

“Trans people are in the middle of a holocaust,” Soloway reportedly said during the walkout on Wednesday. “Apartheid, murder, a state of emergency, human rights crisis, there’s a mental health crisis. There’s a suicide crisis, a bullying crisis, an anxiety, depression, self-hatred state of emergency crisis.”

…doesn’t sound emotionally manipulative or hyperbolic at all.

As for the banal NZ Herald review. It’s tepid virtue signal of Chappelle’s stand up reads like a review to pacify woke snowflakes easily triggered by comedy that challenges them.

It’s a watered down cowardice masquerading as a critique, thankfully any opinion this bland and middle of the road gets run over.

And reversed over.

And run over again.

The ease with which the Herald weakly sacrifices artistic freedom for the cultural Revolution cancel crew is like Bishop Brian Tamaki converting to Islam – why would the old fuddy duddy Herald champion woke crusades against Art?

Is it just their love of censoring anything they don’t understand?

Or they just don’t like black comedians?

Chappelle’s art being reviewed by the Herald is like North Shore Influencers running ICU beds in that the idea is as fucking stupid as it sounds.

You may as well get The Edge Breakfast Morning Crew to interview Banksy, Chomsky and Marx all at once on the existential crisis of capitalism between fart jokes and anti fat shaming campaigns.

Best gelded male review – Fight Club Review

James Croot managed to write a positive review for Fight Club for Stuff without once mentioning toxic masculinity! How he was able to do this remains one of the great editorial mysteries of 2021!

Most vindictive woke review – Milked

Daniel Rutledge’s vindictive review of Milked because it featured Rachel Stewart is a wonderful example of woke cancel culture. Despite the insight she provides, Rutledge shat on the entire documentary simply because she appears! Here is a thoughtful documentary demanding an intelligent response and all Rutledge has is ‘Yuck, TERF!’.

Somewhere there is a library that Daniel wants to burn.

Worst Columnist 2021

John Bishop’s Sausage Roll Extravaganza

Now, to be honest.

I’ve never read a John Bishop column before. Like, I might have accidentally read him in the past, but I don’t ever remember consciously seeking out anything John has written or ever been interested in reading anything John has written.

Until his sausage roll column where John takes to castigating some low paid kid at a fucking petrol station because he doesn’t have sausage rolls ready for John to scarf down in the car to and from home.

I’m not kidding. That’s the actual column.

Now why the fuck John seems to think anyone else is interested in his ability to buy a petrol station sausage roll is utterly beyond me.

Surely at the first sentence John must have realized ‘this is so far up my own arse I need a snorkel’, and yet he soldiered on.

Like the brave boys at Gallipoli, John marched forwards with his column despite knowing that everyone else would see him as a pretentious wanker bitching about some bullshit greasy petrol station sausage roll.

HE DIDN’T CARE! A line had been crossed and John was prepared to be defined by one column throughout his entire career!

All for a cheap petrol station sausage roll!

Worst woke opinion 2021

Criticism of Hate Speech by Stuff’s Homewares ‘journalist’.

I know, why the Christ is Stuff’s Homewares ‘Journalist’ jumping into the fucking hate speech debate, what insight could they provide where philosophical titans have strode?

What else could Stuff’s Homewares ‘journalist’ add that Socrates, Milton and Mill might have missed?

Terrifyingly a lot.

Stuff’s Homewares ‘Journalist’ published a letter she had received from some stupid old bat complaining about a recent article on gay lounges.

Now personally I’m a fan of gay lounges, they are always tastefully designed and make me depressed that no matter how hard I try, my heteronormative cis male interior decorating skills will never match the exquisite beauty and art of a gay lounge.

But this letter writer wasn’t a fan…

Dislike Ikea’s ‘bisexual couch’ all you want, but don’t confuse hate speech with free speech

This week, I received a rather unpleasant email from a mother in Blenheim.

Subject line: Depraved homosexuality promotion.

The promotion in question? A news article about some Pride-flag-themed couches from Ikea.

“Every time these self-confessed queer people are mentioned in the media, the main topic is their physical attraction, like sniffing dogs, to certain parts of the anatomy,” she writes.

“In addition, to portray them as normal when this group of disturbed people is continually crying out for more mental health help is hypocrisy at its worse [sic].

“Please don’t encourage an increase in the cost to the already over burdened benefactor, by attempting to make queer people believe they are normal. The confusion can’t be helping them, nor the kids around them.”

…so a dumb old bat who is projecting her obvious sexual insecurities on a piece of fucking furniture. At worst the letter wasted your time, at best it’s a letter brought out at the end of year Party and read aloud so everyone can mock the writer.

But not for the Homewares ‘journalist’ at Stuff, they bewilderingly blasted the letter as Hate Speech and gleefully warned that this very letter would see a person having the Police called out on them!

Is this hate speech? Under the current New Zealand law, no.

Is it hateful? I would argue yes, and under a new hate speech law it could be a civil offence.

That’s what is so terrifying about this column on Hate Speech, this Woke columnist’s threshold for what she thinks a person should be arrested and spend 3 years in prison for is a fairly banal letter from a basic writer who clearly has some issues regarding their own sexuality.

How the fuck is that letter hate speech?

Does some basic mum from Blenheim deserve 3 years in prison for that letter? Really?

When you appreciate the brittle subjective timid threshold these woke want to claim as Hate Speech you suddenly glimpse the Big Sister fascism they so gleefully wish to be empowered by.

Worst Right Media Moment of jaw dropping gasp inducing madness

Anything Judith Collins touched

Her execution of Nick Smith, Todd Muller and Simon Bridges to ensure a naked Caucus majority showed a bloodlust for power that would make the average Great White Shark look fragile.

Her ham fisted Maori racist separatist crap, begging Don Brash to help and her never ending malice made every media interview a post traumatic event.

Judith’s leadership was like Tinder for sociopaths.

They always swipe right.

Her willingness to enter very cheap Faustian pacts was like a Warehouse bargain home brand Machiavellianess, in that it’s not very good but it’s very cheap.

She left us all feeling overcharged in 2021.

 

Worst Woke Media Moment of jaw dropping gasp inducing madness

Golriz’s threshold for white supremacy

Golriz claimed the Producer’s justification for the movie ‘They Are Us’ was literally “white supremacy” because the Producer was focusing on Jacinda and not the victims!

Golriz’s definition threshold for ‘white supremacy’ is so low that milk would be considered a hate crime! Her claim that the Producer is a white supremacist suggests she sees the KKK every time she changes her sheets!  If a white person disagreeing with her equates to white supremacy we are in an identity politics theology not a functioning democracy.

Best Woke Cancellation 2021

Stuff finally kill off Martin Devlin!

After goading Martin Devlin into a suicide , Stuff finally get their latest woke scalp using the usual Post Me Too hearsay to destroy a mans career…

Broadcaster Martin Devlin quits NZME after taking company to court

Veteran broadcaster Martin Devlin has quit NZME after taking the media company to court over his employment.

In a joint public statement from NZME and Devlin, it was announced that Devlin had “decided to step away” from his Newstalk ZB weekend sports radio show and leave the company.

He has been absent from The Devlin Radio Show for months, during which time he faced employment investigations and attempted to take his own life.

NZME owns The New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB, among other brands.

…The holy trinity of Woke dogma is all white people are irredeemable racists, all men are rapists and anyone defending free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi.

Woke justice is whatever a victim says on Twitter, due process is heteronormative white cis male privilege and it’s far better 10 innocent cis men go to prison than one guilty cis male doesn’t because, you know ‘patriarchy’.

The woke lynch mob on Twitter have been salivating over cancelling Martin Devlin for some time and the cancel culture journalism at Stuff has you openly wondering if their intense and never flinching gaze on every tiny detail of Devlin’s latest troubles was driven by Devlin holding Alison Mau’s pets hostage or something.

Stuff’s desperate drive to uncover the next Harvey Weinstein has blinded them to being anything more than a lynch mob. The way they have insinuated there was something off about Devlin contacting a female staff member and their attempt to paint him out as a violent thug using snowflake trigger thresholds are part and parcel of their woke cancel culture journalism.

If it hadn’t been for Devlin’s partner, the amazingly courageous Andi Brotherston, we wouldn’t know the other side of the story in her must read Twitter thread.

The rudeness of the millennial upstart who burst into Devlin’s studio and demanded Devlin break into his program for breaking news but then wouldn’t tell Devlin what the breaking news was (because Devlin was beneath this journalists contempt) is rarely explained but Devlin lashing out is constantly played up.

The way Stuff have consistently insinuated there was something untoward in his email to another female staff member (when as Andi points out it was Devlin calling her out on her attitude) is grotesquely defamatory.

Hearing the other side of the cancel culture list of sins makes Martin less the pinnacle of white cis male privilege and far more like any bloke over 50 putting up with a younger generation who wallow in a sanctimonious trigger free safe space while screaming wolf at everything that moves.

But the Wellington Twitterati and Stuff should celebrate right? They’ve reached the top of woke cancel culture, snuff activism!

They goaded a white cis male into attempting suicide and that’s good because it’s the ultimate deplatforming isn’t it?

Is Stuff feeling righteous yet? Are the woke sated?

Of course they aren’t, their noble mission to dismantle white cis male privilege is too important to worry about innocent lives wrecked.

ALL HAIL THE WOKE!

 

Best Current Affairs 2021

The unprecedented Gang Covid vaccination video

It was a hell of a task to get the Royalty of the NZ Gangs to agree in appearing on a video calling their members to immunize.

At a time when anti gang hysteria was reaching fever pitch, reaching out in good faith helped produce some of the most coalface Covid prevention current affairs of the entire year!

 

Best Podcast 2021

A View From Afar

Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan provide more insight and oversight to foreign current affairs in NZ than any other single media outlet. Why the Christ isn’t THIS funded by NZ on Air? There’s a NZ on Air funded podcast where women talk about the news, I’m not kidding – how is that funded and not A View From Afar????

The 2021 must reads

These Journalists, Columnists and Bloggers are the best of the best and provide the most insight and oversight.

Everything they create is a must read, must see if you want to understand what is happening around us and in an age of horrific misinformation, they are needed more than ever before.

Moana Maniapoto, Mihingarangi Forbes, Luke Malpass, Andrea Vance, Thomas Coughlan, Claire Trevett, Michael Morrah, Katie Bradford, Barbara Dreaver, Chris Trotter, John Campbell, Henry Cooke & Breakfast TVNZs TikTok account.

 

Best Public Broadcasting Service

Dr Bryce Edwards Daily Politics Newsletter

The Blogfather and House of Gryffendore aficionado Dr Bryce Edwards provides the Daily Politics Newsletter free of charge and provides you with a 360degree analysis of the NZ political media spectrum in real time. It does more to foster debate than any other media organ! Show it some love!

Best Columnist 2021

Damien Grant

Damien’s columns in Stuff this year have been funny and insightful. He has gone after actual issues and highlighted genuine opposition in ways even I admit might be half true. His ability to outshine is helped by the appallingly wet nonsense Stuff publishes as opinion pieces. In handing him this award he will be hated by his colleagues and David Slack. That makes me laugh so much I fall over.

Worst Interview 2021

Free speech debate

Jesus wept, there is a train crash and then there is Kris Faafoi. Tova ripped him to pieces on Newshub, he couldn’t explain how something as subjective as ‘hate’ would be judged other than tell us the Police will decide.

How terrifying.

The Police are to judge what is hateful and prosecute based on that?

The current line is incitement to violence, that is very clear, but a subjective hate test based on brittle feelings is a recipe for disaster.

Every time Kris Faafoi opens his mouth to justify strangling off free speech, a Fairy dies and ACT gains 2 more votes!

Jacinda’s follow up interview to clean up Kris’s nightmare turned out worse as it became painfully clear the Prime Minister didn’t understand the implications of criminalizing speech either!

Most astonishing NZ on Air funded Woke Wank 2021

Spinoff & Stuff

After taking so much public money they still beg readers for donations!

I always thought everyone knew Spin off was nothing more than a social engineering Government propaganda platform for middle class millennials masquerading as ‘journalism’, but the amount of Government money poured into the SpinOff has surprised us all.

$6.1million????

This woke cavalcade of poorly viewed taxpayer funded content created with all the same intellectual rigor of your average suburban Wellington mommy blogger trigger thresholds has produced an editorial team who are in a daily struggle session to prove who hates heteronormative white cis males the most.

$6million dollars so white people can feel guilty and virtue signaling their therapy learnings just seems so fucking Wellington, am I right?

Apparently Stuff could take $300k for a ‘cultural competency course’ which obviously didn’t cover goading Martin Devlin into a suicide.

Biggest local story ignored 2021

Oranga Tamariki vs Family Court Judge Peter Callinicos

The entire Labour Party Cabinet should be on their knees thanking God that the Covid lockdown distracted the attention of almost every Kiwi because if we weren’t so distracted, the genuine anger at what was happening inside Oranga Tamariki would be an all encompassing furnace of outrage.

The enormity of Sir Wira Gardiner’s extraordinary overreach by contacting two judges and attempting to intervene in an ongoing trial, ostensibly for grilling a Social Worker too harshly, is just so gasp inducing in its audacity that it borders on corrupt.

I have called for a very long time for Maori providers to take over Oranga Tamariki because I believe Tikanga values are far more healing and beneficial to all vulnerable children than the hollow costed values of our neoliberal welfare system that sees clients of their services as opposed to children in need.

What was happening here in Oranga Tamariki IS NOT tikanga, it is woke critical race theory the dogma of which declares no white family can give a brown child a good life.

By attempting to disrupt and influence an ongoing investigation into Oranga Tamariki taking back Maori children from a white family (when that testimony is so egregiously damming of Oranga Tamariki) is an attempt to not only corrupt independent justice, but also hiding the appallingly racist behaviour of a State agency using the most extreme powers a State has, that of uplifting children from parents and step-parents.

Now, one could argue that Sir Wira Gardiner was extending his protection to the OT Social Worker whom the Judge destroyed in questioning, but when you see the answers to how the Social Worker deceived and lied to the white step-family and the grotesque malfunction of Critical Race Theory making its gruesome calculation that despite telling the little Maori girl she was safe and would remain with the white step-family, Oranga Tamariki would split them up because the white step-family were too white!

I mean, sure Sir Wira Gardiner can claim the Judge bullied the social worker, but sweet Jesus look at what was revealed!

If your position is attempting to shut down a trial because too many truths and facts are coming out, isn’t that a tad on you?

Let’s remind ourselves of the lies, so many lies that the Social Worker used to justify psychologically harming a young Maori girl because you know, the heteronormative white cis male patriarchy…

There were some early signs, however, that the social worker might be out of her depth. The review filed in November 2018 said Moana had a close relationship with her grandfather. It transpired her grandfather had died five months earlier.

And while Social Worker 1 was filing these glowing reports, she was telling others in her office that the Smiths were stripping Moana of her Māori identity. She said she felt “incessantly undermined” by the Smiths and said the couple “attempted to sabotage whānau access” for Moana.

She pointed to the Smith’s “disregard for Te Ao Māori” (the Māori world view), and said they were incapable of providing Moana with the “cultural aspects” she needed.

The Smiths had no idea these conversations were taking place.

When she was asked in court why she didn’t include these concerns in her reviews, Social Worker 1 said she did but was told to remove them by her supervisor. (The supervisor would later deny this under oath, and said any changes he made were only grammatical).

Among the social worker’s concerns was an allegation that the Smiths had asked Moana’s daycare centre to refer to her by her nickname (an abbreviation of her name). This was “an attempt to remove her from her identity”, she said.

Social Worker 1 said the Smiths raised issues about Moana’s behaviour following access visits with her birth mother, and she saw this as the Smiths “making up issues to try and get reasons to have no contact”.

Another allegation concerned an access visit with Moana’s birth mother. Social Worker 1 claimed Mrs Smith pulled Moana away from hugging her birth mother and “proceeded to wipe her down with a cloth in what looked like an attempt to remove any germs”. She did not ask Mrs Smith what she was doing, but passed her concerns on to other Oranga Tamariki staff.

(Mrs Smith would later say Moana and her birth mother were not embracing each other, and she had used a wet wipe to clean Vegemite from Moana’s hands).

Separately, the Smiths held their own concerns about the social worker, and in May 2019 they complained to her supervisor.

A few weeks later the Smiths were informed that there were concerns around their attendance at access visits and the couple would need to undergo a cultural assessment. The couple were surprised about this and asked why it was required and what it involved.

Oranga Tamariki staff told the Smiths it was very rare – some had never been involved in one – and they were unable to provide any detail on the process or guidelines of such an assessment.

A meeting was held in late June 2019 in which the Smiths were told that Oranga Tamariki was concerned about their ability to provide for Moana’s cultural needs. The supervisor told the Smiths the cultural assessment would acknowledge “the good work you are already doing to promote [Moana’s] cultural identity”, and would hopefully provide some detail around Moana’s whakapapa.

When the Smiths asked why other Pākehā caregivers with Māori children were not subject to the same assessments, the supervisor responded that it was a good question, and all he could say was that there had been issues around access.

The supervisor couldn’t provide any brochures or pamphlets for the Smiths to inform them of what a cultural assessment involved. (The supervisor would later give evidence saying he felt the Smiths may have been directing “unconscious racism” towards Social Worker 1).

The Smiths believed the assessment was a ruse being used by the Ministry as a way to find them unsuitable and to have Moana removed from their care. They refused to take part.

…deceitful tricks and race accusations with no resources provided to enable the white step-family to help the little girls cultural growth…

The assessment was conducted by an independent cultural expert. His original task had been to assess the Smiths’ understanding of Te Ao Maori and their ability to provide Moana’s cultural needs, but that changed when the Smiths said they would not take part in the assessment, and he ended up looking solely at Moana.

His report was provided to Oranga Tamariki on September 11, 2019. It included scant information on Moana’s whakapapa, other than noting she had a distant relation in Taranaki.

The assessor, later giving evidence in court, would say a Māori child growing up in a non-Maori family would “not have the same opportunity in terms of inculcation of values,” he said.

He said it would be “extremely challenging” for a non-Māori family to raise a Māori child in the correct cultural manner, and failing to provide for cultural needs could result in a child’s health being compromised later in life. He said the decision on where Moana should be placed should lie with Ngāti Kahungunu.

…The ‘assessor’ uses critical race theory to deduce that this child will do worse with white parents, which seems an extremely limited view to judge this case on!

Look, if Oranga Tamariki can find whanau to place a Maori child with at the point of uplifting a child – all fine and dandy.

The recent involvement of Iwi stepping in to be that whanau resource at the point of uplift is a great development but that’s not what’s happened here.

In this case, as with many others, the Maori child has been placed with a white family for years and told they are staying with that white family permanently, to rip a child from the bandages of emotional healing and sense of security for some dogmatic implementation of woke critical race theory is the kind of zealotry that burns books!

The Judge didn’t bully this testimony out of Oranga Tamariki, and even if he did, what has been exposed is so damning that it justified bullying.

To attempt to intervene in the sacrosanctness of our independent judiciary so racist practices by Oranga Tamariki can be hidden is so disbelievingly outside the norms of our system it’s almost a Donald Trump level molestation of due process.

The Labour Party better hope an omicron outbreak sweeps the nation for at least another 4 weeks to hide this appalling ideological implosion inside Oranga Tamariki.

Biggest international story ignored 2021

Trial of Julian Assange.

Without his work the war crimes, the murders, the abuses of power that damaged so many would never have seen the light of day.

The silence by the mainstream media is almost Palestine level avoidance.

This stopped being about Justice a long time ago.

What a bitter day for democracy and journalism!

Best Political Panel

The Working Group, MagicTalk 7pm Fridays

If you didn’t think I’d pick my own panel show, this must be the first time you’ve ever visited this blog.

Best Political Podcast

The Working Group – the best weekly political podcast that isn’t funded by NZ on Air. 

Again. If you didn’t think I’d pick my own podcast, this really must be the first time you’ve ever visited this blog.

Worst Political Podcast – Gone by Lunchtime 

I’m listening to this so you don’t have to. It was a toss up between State funded social engineering propaganda on The Spin-off or State funded social engineering propaganda on Stuff where they have just launched a new podcast looking at the impact of the News on women.

I’m not joking, they really have.

So I went with the shorter of two evils and tuned into The Spin-offs in house production of their political podcast ‘Gone by Lunctime’.

It’s a community service Ben Thomas does to seek forgiveness from the woke for working with Matthew Hooton.

The first 10 minutes are taken up with them laughing about podcast awards and Annabelle talked on and on and on about a pigeon.

I’m not joking.

It turns to a discussion about Tuis.

Which becomes some extended metaphor about vaccinations.

Then they talk about the table they are sitting at.

Is this how they actually talk in real life?

A meandering inoffensive meaninglessness that slowly goes nowhere?

This is their political debate?

It has all the energy and dynamism of a vegan baby in a hot car.

Duncan Grieve makes a surprise entry to boast about how much money NZ on Air gave them and then extraordinarily begs listeners for MORE money!

‘MORE GRAVY’ cries Duncan while drowning in creamy public money.

 

3 worst TV adverts 2021

1st: Spark whale shanty for non binary millennials

A non binary woke millennial falls in love with a whale shanty that goes global and half way through the frenzy, other non binary woke millennials point out it’s a historic whaling song and hilariously they all turn on it and cancel it. It’s like Mao’s cultural Revolution if Mao had been a monopolistic telecommunications corporation. The advert should end with a library on fire.

2nd: Westpac Where the Wild Things are knock off/possible pedophile monster

I’m not sure what the fuck this is all about but anytime a NZ advert has higher production values than your average Taika Waititi film, I’m always suspicious. The message here from Westpac is clear, the only way children in NZ ever have of owning a house is if a giant magical Yeti builds it for you. Does anyone else notice that the monster grooms all these children and then once its won them over, lifts them up and steals them into the forest? Shouldn’t someone call the police?

3rd: Breast cancer Dalek voice from the pretentious first year art school dimension

Whenever this advert comes on, my cat freaks out and runs out of the lounge. Dogs start howling and milk curdles. The weird alien Dalek voice from the pretentious first year art school dimension grates like broken glass on bone marrow. It reeks of Wellington in a way the Spark whale shanty for non binary millennials advert does. Islamic State terrorists would confess to any crime after just 5minutes of this other world Dalek doom voice advert on loop.

Here’s to 2022!

The Working Group Podcast will return 7.30pm January 10th.

Have a great New Years and Summer from everyone at The Daily Blog!

 

*No David Cormacks or Liam Hehirs were harmed during the making of this Political Awards blog. But fuck Damien Christie am I right?

 

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.