Aaron Smale at Stuff writes:

When the Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni admitted she hadn’t read a report from the royal commission, it was all downhill from there.

After nearly a week of waiting for an interview with her, I finally got a call from Sepuloni as she travelled from Rotorua to Auckland on Thursday. I wanted to talk to her about a change to the legislation governing oversight of Oranga Tamariki.

Second question in, I asked if she had read the report on redress from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care – a pertinent document for someone whose ministry was responsible for setting up oversight for Oranga Tamariki.

She hadn’t read it. It appeared she hadn’t heard of it.

She’s the Minister for Social Development and she hasn’t even read (or possibly heard of) a report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

Wow, she makes Phil Twyford look under-rated.

Claire Trevett writes:

Hindsight is a very effective strategist, but there is one moment police may look back upon as the lost opportunity to nip the anti-mandate protests at Parliament in the bud.

That was on the afternoon of the first day the protesters arrived – Tuesday nearly two weeks ago.

The protest was much, much smaller then, and three or four tents were put up that afternoon.

Parliament asked police to provide protection while Parliament’s security went in to remove them.

The police ruled it out for reasons that remain unclear.

Nothing happened and by the next day more tents were up. More tents have been set up every day since. By Friday, the Beehive was nearly surrounded.

That was the time to take action. It is now too difficult for the Police to remove people, but they could have done so when it was just four tents.

There have been moments that have begged to be lampooned. High among them was Police Commissioner Andrew Coster’s so-called towing crackdown.

Coster did not front publicly until Tuesday – a week after the protesters arrived. He said the protest was now “untenable” and put protesters on notice that if they did not move their cars, the towing would begin the next day. He also admitted they could not find towies to do the job, and the Army didn’t have the right equipment.

The next day the only car that was actually towed was a police car, which had a flat tyre.

Almost funny, except for the disruption being caused to many in Wellington.

National’s Simon Bridges had long ago made it clear what he thought of Coster’s approach to policing, saying he was a “wokester” who was too soft on serious criminals.

Useful to remember the Commissioner is decided upon solely by the Prime Minister. They are not appointed like most government department chief executives. Ardern personally selected Coster.

Stuff reports:

He said the Government had 7.3 million RATs in the country, but would have 22.5 million by the end of the month. Next week, he said 9.2 million would arrive.

But access to those tests remained heavily restricted, with only specified “critical services” in food supply, emergency services and lifeline utilities able to access them.

To access those tests, companies had to undergo a qualification process – which the National Party hit out at as “overly bureaucratic”.

Only certain, pre-approved businesses would qualify to be able to use RATs – and only under certain circumstances.

In many countries RAT tests can be purchased at the supermarket. The NZ Government has been so incompetent that it didn’t order any in time, so first it stole the stocks private organizations had ordered and now it has set up a rationing system that is bureaucracy gone mad.

Here is what you have to do if you are an employer with an employee that you wish to have take a RAT.

1. Try to register with MBIE as a critical business or organisation. For some insane reasons schools don’t even qualify.
2. The employee who needs a RAT test has to go out into the community and find a RAT collection point (they only have two or three for all of Auckland).
3. They need to have proof the employer is a critical business
4. They need proof they work for that employer
5. They need proof of identity
6. They need proof they were a close contact

If they can manage all that, then the Government will give them a RAT test. Yay.

This week Curia did a poll for Family First on vaccinations and mandates. As far as I know it is the first poll to ask why people got vaccinated – was it motivated by health reasons, or due to coercive measures if they didn’t get vaccinated.

The full results are here.

In terms of why they got vaccinated the findings were:

• Protect personal health, 70% said it was a large or the main factor
• Protect health of others, 76% large/main
• Due to vaccine pass, 36% large/main
• Due to vaccine mandate 31% large/main

The results suggest that only 70% to 75% of those vaccinated did so primarily for health
reasons. Around a third of those vaccinated said vaccine mandate or pass requirements was a
large factor in their decision.

Why this is important is the Government (and repeated by many in the media) keeps saying 94% of adults have been vaccinated, so those against are only 6%. But that is an incorrect way to interpret it. Because a significant minority of that 94% only did so because the state coerced them into it through vaccine mandates. So this is why opposition to vaccine mandates is greater than 6% and many of those opposed are themselves vaccinated.

Another key finding was that people support flexibility with the mandates. 61% think unvaccinated employees should be able to keep their job if they agree to have regular rapid antigen testing as an alternative. This is not a radical right policy, but in fact the policy of Joe Biden. Yet it won’t even be considered here.

Even Labour voters support this flexibility. This measure was supported by 74% of 2020 ACT voters, 70% of National voters and 58% of Labour voters. Only 2020 Green voters were not majority in support, but still a plurality at 42%. So such a change would have broad coass-party appeal.

Another interesting finding is the difference between respondents who were double and triple vaccinated. 80% of those who are triple vaccinated did so reasons of protecting their health. But only 54% of those double vaccinated cited health as a large factor. This suggests that there will be significant hesitancy in getting a booster as boosters are not mandated.

David Fisher writes:

Dismissive arrogance towards the protesters at Parliament is making the situation worse.

That’s not just Parliament’s high-handed approach. Opinion pieces and public sentiment that mock and sneer at people’s sincerely held beliefs serves to isolate those in our community who reckon the Government has got it wrong.

Those who do believe this are greater in number than vaccination figures would suggest.

Many suggest the protesters are a tiny minority because only 6% of adults are unvaccinated. But they don’t realise some of those 94% who got vaccinated didn’t want to do so, and felt coerced into it.

And there are others who were enthusiastic to personally get vaxed, but think the mandates are wrong.

To dismiss those people – as the Prime Minister does by citing our 95 per cent vaccination rate – is wrong. To mock those people, as some in Parliament have done, is worse. Isolation is a classic part of the radicalisation process. The further and harder you push people away, the more fixed they become.

Spot on.

For every person that did make the journey, there are many others who wished they were there. They are people who stayed home and expected when they came out it would be over, who got their jabs and then thought that would be it, who had children stuck overseas, who knew someone who couldn’t go to their mother’s funeral, who lost their house when they lost their job.

Across our country, there are decent, well-intentioned Kiwis who have packed the car, readied the campervan, bought plane tickets and travelled to Wellington.

They arrived as a formless mass, unclear as to what they wanted other than a general rallying cry to “end the mandates”, a move that will come but most definitely will not under threat of protest and Omicron.

The problem is the Government won’t give any idea of when the mandates will end. If they said something like “They’ll end once we have 90% of people boosted” or “They’ll end when Covid cases are less than 100 a day” then those against the mandates might accept that. But refusing to give any idea of when re might return to a non coercive state, means those feeling oppressed have no reason to go home.

The way out of the protest is not through the protest but with the protest. Rather than dismiss the protesters, recognise that the views they hold are genuine and hard-earned. Recognise they dedicated considerable thought to their views and adopted a stance that is honest and principled.

Having done so, recognise too that it is the one thing on which we disagree that is making it difficult to see what we like about each other. Finding a circuit-breaker to do that is hard but necessary.

Ultimately, most of those on Parliament’s forecourt want the same thing as those inside Parliament’s walls – for New Zealand to be a free and open democracy in which we are able to live our lives in the best way possible, subject to the freedoms enjoyed by each other.

What David Fisher says makes more sense than those who advocate the Police should go in and try to arrest over 1,000 people.

Newshub reports:

Health Minister Andrew Little was blindsided by the news 10,000 healthcare workers will go on strike. 

Those going on strike include contact tracers and lab workers who carry out COVID-19 testing, saying they’ve had enough of being disrespected by their employers.

There’ll be two 24-hour strikes on March 4 and 18 – when the Omicron outbreak could be at its peak.

“If we go on strike, COVID testing will be delayed. We need to be listened to by the Government and we need to be appreciated for all the work that we do,” says laboratory technician Sue.

But Little was blindsided when asked about it on Thursday.

“I’m not familiar with exactly what you’re talking about so I’m reluctant to comment on that,” he says.

“You’ve ambushed me, I’m sorry, you’ve ambushed me and I’m not familiar with that.”

How can a Minister not be aware 10,000 of his staff are going on strike?

Stuff reports:

Minimum wage workers working more than 43 hours a week are shifting into the third-highest tax bracket, and one tax expert says it highlights the problems with New Zealand’s system.

The Government announced last week that the minimum wage would increase to $21.20 an hour from April 1.

For people working a 40-hour week, that equates to $44,096 a year. But if they worked 43 hours a week at minimum wage, they would get to the top of the 17.5 per cent tax bracket, and any extra income would be taxed at 30 per cent.

This is what happens when you don’t index tax brackets to inflation. Here’s the average tax rate for someone on the minimum wage over the last decade.

• 2010: 13.8%
• 2014: 14.2%
• 2017: 14.5%
• 2020: 15.0%
• 2022: 15.3%

So a fulltime minimum wage earner is paying 1.5% more in tax than a decade ago due to the failure to index tax brackets to either inflation or wages.

Yesterday a remarkable and touching chapter of immediate post WW2 history closed with the passing of former US Airforce Colonel Gail Halvorson at aged 101. Halvorson was better known as the Candy Bomber or Uncle Wiggly Wings during the infamous Berlin Airlift.

In June 1948, as relations between the US (and its European allies) and the Soviet Union dramatically soured, one of the most poignant manifestation of what came to be called the Cold War was the sudden Soviet blockade of West Berlin. Just as all of post war Germany had been parceled into four zones administered by the victorious Allied powers (the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union) so too was Berlin similarly partitioned into four administrative zones administered by the same four powers. Berlin however was ensconced inside the Soviet Zone of Germany (that later became East Germany) and thus was surrounded by the Soviets. To ramp up the pressure on President Truman and to impose Soviet power in the region, Stalin ordered the blockade of all road and rail links into West Berlin from West Germany in an attempt to starve the citizens of West Berlin into submission thus enabling the Soviets to seize control of the whole city.

The western allies, led by the US, mounted an ambitious campaign of air lifts to fly in needed food, fuel and other supplies to keep the citizens of West Berlin alive. At the peak of the Berlin Air Lift, allied supply planes (mostly Douglas C47 Dakotas and C54 Skymasters) were landing at Berlin – Templehof Airport at the rate of 1 plane every 90 seconds. Over the 15-month period of the airlift, over 278,000 landings were completed, and 2.3 million tons of supplies airlifted in before the Soviets backed down and lifted the blockade.

A heartwarming chapter of the Berlin Airlift occurred in July 1948 when then Lieutenant Halvorson happened to spend a few spare hours of time off inside West Berlin. Given the short amount of time he was granted, he and his friend could not do much sightseeing. As they approached the airport along a road that bordered the perimeter fence of Templehof, Gail stopped to film the airlift with his home cine-camera. He noticed about 30 skinny German kids aged 6 to 15 crowding the perimeter fence and watching the landing and taking off of the planes and the unloading of the lifesaving supplies. Many of these kids wore rags for clothes and being it was summer, many of the boys were shirtless and had no shoes. Gail and his friend stopped and watched these impoverished local children play and he approached the perimeter fence. The children quickly crowded around the fence to talk to the American pilots.

The older children who spoke some English asked what he did, and he told them that he was one of the pilots who was part of the airlift. What happened next changed Gail’s world forever. These children profusely thanked him for what he and the Americans and British were doing to save them. They said that in July it’s easy to fly in here but in the winter, when it is cold and rainy it will be hard to keep flying in so please don’t give up on us when it gets tough. Realising that more was at stake than just food to keep them alive, one boy said, “We can get by on a little food, but if we lose our freedom, we may never get it back”. Having lived under the tyranny of Nazism, even these children knew that if the airlift failed, they would live under the tyranny of Soviet communism. Gail was gob smacked by the clarity and simplicity of what he was actually doing and its clear impact on these young hungry children who had survived the awful privations of the Allied bombings, the Battle of Berlin and the aftermath of the war.

Despite their deprivation, not one of these kids begged or asked for food until Gail realised that none of them would’ve had anything like candy in months even years and he dug into his pockets to see what he had to give and all he had was two sticks of chewing gum. What happened next transfixed Gail. The children to whom he gave the sticks of gum to broke the gum up into small pieces so that as many of the children could have but a tiny piece. Then those who could not have any gum took the foil gum wrapper and were content to merely smell the scent of the American gum, passing the wrapper from child to child until all who were gathered had shared. He knew that the citizens of Berlin were suffering and that he was part of a superhuman effort to save these people, but he saw a real-life consequence of the starvation of the people and its effect on these innocent children.

Wanting to support these young children in any small way possible, he pledged to get them some chocolate and other candy. The excited children begged to know when he would return with what to them would’ve been pure gold and something they had likely not seen in a long time. Gail knew that a short leave inside Berlin like he had been granted was likely never going to be granted again such was the enormous pressure of time on the pilots who flew these missions around the clock. He said to the children, I will drop the candy from the window of the plane when I am landing. To which the children responded, how will we know it is your plane for thousands of flights land every day. He said that as I am approaching the runway, I will wiggle my plane’s wings and then we will make the drop.

Gail and his friend returned to the airport and when back at the supply depot in West Germany, he got all his friends to give over their entitlement of chocolate and candy bars and he and his fellow crew members used their handkerchiefs to make miniature parachutes because to throw even small chocolate bars at 110mph might injure the children. Sure enough on his next flight into Berlin, as he approached the runway, he wiggled the wings of his plane and made the drop of the Hershey’s chocolate bars down to the now hundreds of eager children waiting in the vacant land on the approach to the runway.

Such was the popularity of the drop that Gail began casting around for spare candy and chocolate and handkerchiefs amongst the various pilots, crew and ground crew at the air force base and pretty soon the candy drops became a regular feature. Needless to say, the crowds of children swelled to thousands as the prospect of American chocolate dropped from a plane was on offer. After a few weeks, Gail was reported to his superior officers who at first reprimanded him for not asking permission first but eventually they relented and soon US chocolate and candy manufacturers came on board and thousands of people across the US made the mini parachutes and the candy drops became regular and widespread even across Berlin enabling tens of thousands of children to have a little treat above the mundane tightly rationed food they were forced to subsist on in what came to be dubbed as Operation Little Vittles eventually dropping over 20 tons of confectionary in 9 months!

Gail Halvorson became a hero to the people of Berlin. After the end of the airlift, he was showered with awards of gratitude by the Mayor of Berlin and the leaders of the nascent republic of West Germany. Gail maintained strong ties to Berlin for decades after and he made regular appearances at ceremonies held to honour the anniversaries of the lifting of the blockade. In 1970 he was appointed the senior US Airforce commander at Templehof Airport in Berlin in recognition of his strong connection to the city. When a retirement ceremony was held at the airport when his service in Berlin was up, thousands of the then children of Berlin in 1948 came now as elderly adults to meet the man who had brought a ray of hope and happiness during one of the darkest times of their young lives.

Gail Halvorson was a humble farm boy from southern Utah and Idaho and never sought fame or glory, merely to honour a promise to get some chocolate for a handful of blond haired disheveled German kids at the fence of Templehof airport. This small act of kindness mushroomed to a potent symbol of freedom and became emblematic of the efforts the allies went to to rebuild the country that they had shattered to defeat the horrors of Hitler’s regime.

PBS made a documentary about Gail Halvorson and his role as the Candy Bomber. A 5 minute summary is here when he talks about his first meeting with the kids https://youtu.be/5iaWzIX4mp0 and here is a link to the entire show https://youtu.be/jGc4vY_GwSc

Gail Seymour Halvorson – October 20, 1920 to February 16, 2022 – may he Rest in Peace.

Sir Russell Coutts has announced he is heading to Parliament to join the protesters. Will the Speaker call him a feral also. Will Government Ministers imply he is a fascist neo nazi?

Also of note is that former Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox is at the protest and another former co-leader Dame Tariana Turia has lashed out at the Prime Minister over her response to the protest. Who would have thought they were closet white supremacists! Turia declares she has no confidence in Jacinda Ardern.

A reader writes in:

The Bill of Rights says I am entitled to come home to my country. It is now 6 months since I left  to visit family in Perth and how can it be reasonable to keep me out?

We had a bubble with Australia. A few days before I left for Perth on 17 July 2020, the DG publicly stated that they would continue to review border decisions with Australia state by state.

Yes – another  “truth” from the podium.”

On  22 December 2021 Perth had its first community case, yet in those 5 months of no cases it made no difference to the NZ Government’s decision to allow it’s citizens to return from their holiday. I had much more at risk in returning to NZ than any NZ citizen had from me. Even now there are very few cases here.

Interestingly, my family all tell me now “they have put in place exceptions which you can  apply for to get  home” – but it’s smoke and mirrors. People in my situation do not qualify, only goes who flew here after NZ’s December decision to close again , or those who sold a house etc in Australia based on that decision. Those of us with homes and businesses who came here 6  months ago are out of luck. 

Then to top things off, this week the Government stopped my superannuation.

Talk about ‘kind” they know from Custom’s records I flew to Australia. MSD do not operate with modern communication methods so no doubt there a snail mail letter on its way to my address – knowing fully well I am not there to get it – telling me they have stopped payment. Bureaucracy at its best

When I go to the ‘senior section” of the MSD website, there is a phone number to make  contact. But I want this in writing (and my husband in his 80’s avoids phones due to hearing problems which  many seniors suffer from).  I eventually found a MSD ‘Complaints’  section and my complaint IS BELOW – using every single letter count available to me. Apparently I WILL receive a response within 5 working days.

They say they will ring me but I have no expectation and anyway I asked for an email reply. I now use an Oz phone to keep costs down and I am yet to find a NZ department and will use wifi comms to access me on my NZ Phone number

 I’ve looked at a Dunkirk type evacuation but can’t find anyone willing to assist as they too might end up locked out. How can a DJ get in from the UK and an MP get a spot to ‘holiday’ when so many citizens who live in Australia are refugees now – and many like us have never been near a Covid hotspot. 

The cost of the inner city bedsit rental we finally managed to get ( from an old friend who will allow us to give short notice to leave )plus the furniture rental is more that a week’s super. We can make no long term decisions because the Government does not do so. So much for the Bill of Rights…..

The complaint…

Tell us what happened’

You stopped paying Superannuation on 14 January 2022!

17 July 2020 I left my home & business for 4 weeks. I have not been able to return – the Government has stopped me. I have applied for MIQ on every occasion.

When the announcement came that I could leave, I booked the 1st allowable date-17 January (tomorrow). Nothing now enables me to come home as that flight was cancelled. 

Most of my family are in NZ (Except one son and 2 grandchildren here in Perth). I have done everything in my power to return to home & importantly my business which I am managing from here. Sadly 85% of my international customers are also unable to visit so my life’s investment is at risk.

Now you stop my superannuation.

I have double costs  – NZ & Perth. There have been unavoidable health care costs & my son has no room in his small house. 

I have paid taxes all my life and am entitled to superannuation. The Govt stops me from returning to my life & country and now stops super. How is this possible?

‘How can we fix this for you?’ Simple. Continue to pay the superannuation I am entitled to. 

The Taxpayers’ Union has announced:

The Taxpayers’ Union will today be refunding the fuel tax paid by those refuelling their vehicles at Takapuna Gull, between 12:00pm and 12.30pm, to mark Fuel Tax Honesty Day. 

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Louis Houlbrooke says, “In Auckland, 52 percent of the price of a litre of petrol is made up of taxes and levies.”

“We will be handing refuellers cash to refund them for the tax they pay on their fuel purchase.”

“Consumers are often unaware of what goes into the prices they pay, and this is most striking with petrol prices.”

“The Taxpayers’ Union has called on the Government to rein in the cost of living by cutting the excise tax on petrol.” “Fuel costs filter through to the price of every single household good, driving inflation and putting strain on household budgets.”

“If you can’t come along to get your fuel tax refund you can still support the campaign by signing the petition at www.fueltax.nz,” says Mr Houlbrooke.

So if you live near Takapuna hurry along to Takapuna Gull to get something you’ll probably never get again – petrol without petrol tax. This could knock the cost of filling your tank up by $60 or more.

A guest post from a leftwing Wellingtonian who used to be a student at Victoria University of Wellington:

On Monday, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association called for “law enforcement to take action” against protesters, in order to remove obstacles to traffic and eliminate disruption to classes on Pipitea campus.

Hard to believe this is the same organisation whose website proudly remembers the “spontaneous storming of Parliament” by student protesters in 1964, under the heading ‘Our Story’. On VUWSA’s website you’ll also find praise for “dozens of students… arrested outside Parliament in 1997”, and fond memories of the general meeting which approved sending two thousand dollars to the Viet Minh to purchase a tank.

Now they call for police violence to drive dissenting minorities off campus grounds, and let’s be clear; that’s what “action” means in this context. Violence. Not the ‘violence’ of rude words or heretical opinions, but the actual violence of men and women acting on behalf of the state.

How times have changed. “No cops on campus” used to be the member-endorsed policy of student unions around New Zealand.

On the Salient front page in April 1974, an article criticised drunken rowdiness in the Union Hall precisely because it could give police an excuse to enter student territory.

In March 1975, a VUWSA Executive meeting addressed two instances of police intrusion. Salient reported that “Alfonso’s food bar was burgled recently and Byron Buick-Constable, Managing secretary of the Union, called the cops without consulting any member of the Exec. The Exec passed a motion of censure against him.” The next paragraph notes “two detectives were allegedly on duty at the Gay Lib Ball. An extremely annoyed Exec swore for a while.”

On multiple occasions in the 1990s, Otago University students voted to “condemn the presence of police on campus”, committed their Student Association to “support its members’ active opposition to the presence of police”, because cops being there “would tend to undermine the free and open exchange of ideas and impede the development of an effective learning environment, and would provide no solution to the problem of crime on campus.”

In March 1993, an article in the University of Waikato’s student magazine Nexus described fierce opposition from members of the Waikato Student Union to the proposed introduction of a permanent community constable on campus. The article includes supporting comments from Auckland University Student Association President Richie Watson, who noted that in the 1960s an agreement was reached between AUSA and the police, stipulating cops weren’t allowed on campus unless invited.

In 2003, a VUWSA Student Representative Council overwhelmingly endorsed a motion echoing the OUSA position statement, adding “the police should not have routine access to campus that could be used to monitor or interfere with political activity.”

VUWSA broke with tradition when they called for police to enforce law and order on campus, but it was hardly a conscious rejection of the past. “No cops on campus” didn’t just happen. Many students in the 60s, 70s and 90s knew what it was like to protest against foreign wars and domestic neoliberalism, and how it felt when police violently dispersed them. If students protest these days, they’re more likely to have a police escort.

VUWSA President Ralph Zambrano told media the “dangerous gridlock” makes his members feel “anxious, afraid, and vulnerable”, due to “notable incidences of harassment and vandalism.”

This part of the call for a crackdown is light on specifics, but given the ever growing list of things which make today’s students feel anxious, we may hear more pleas for police protection down the road.

Much has been made of a few badly behaved protesters, but let’s get real. This is a mildly disruptive protest, boring by international standards. Nobody has been hurt worse than you’d expect in an average game of indoor soccer, and most not even that. The bus trip home from Lambton Quay takes maybe three minutes longer without access to Molesworth Street. There’s far less threatening and violent behaviour than you can expect after dark on Courtenay Place – not even close. This coming Friday you’ll be much safer outside Parliament than outside the Establishment.

Protests are loud, messy, sometimes confrontational, often inconvenient. We’re not used to that in this country, so we find the occupation of Parliament lawn shocking. A few deep breaths would go a long way. What separates the Freedom Convoy from student “strikes” over climate change or the June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests (which openly flouted lockdown restrictions, without penalties) is not its uniquely despicable character, but rather its determination to defy the state and the law, even when facing the threat of violence.

Wild talk of a menacing far-right and white supremacist mob poised to storm the Beehive is embarrassing hysteria. Yes, some far-right activists have attended the demonstration. They’ve even posted a video on Twitter. They’ve written poorly spelled slogans on a handful of signs and car windows, some threatening violence toward politicians and journalists. Such behaviour should be condemned, but not exaggerated.

Anyone who has ever attended or organised a sizeable protest knows how difficult it is to prevent idiots from showing up and opportunists from latching on, and how difficult it is to prevent the media from highlighting those outliers. They get the most clicks.

If the presence of a small number of people with far-right politics makes this a white supremacist demonstration, anyone who’s attended an anti-war, environmentalist, unionist or feminist demonstration should be expected to justify their involvement in Marxist mobilisations to replace bourgeois democracy with a proletarian dictatorship. Zoom into the photos and there they are! Handing out their poorly xeroxed newsletters, marching for climate justice under the hammer and sickle.

Radical leftists have every right to attend those demonstrations, many of which rely on background organising by far-left groups and individuals. But would anyone seriously claim that because Trotskyist sects and anarcho-communist polycules are in the crowd, a protest against free trade agreements becomes an attempt at anti-capitalist insurrection? If there are avowed Marxists in a union’s leadership, should liberal democrats and religious believers shun protests by supermarket or fast food workers seeking higher wages? Must we fear creeping communism and reds under the bed?

On Monday morning, two left wing academics went head to head on Radio New Zealand over these questions. Bryce Edwards, who has visited the occupation multiple times, argued the overwhelming majority of protesters abhor and reject calls for violence against politicians. Morgan Godfery hasn’t spent a second there, but has done enough research on Twitter to form an opinion.

In Godfery’s words: “If they abhor the idea, then they should be rejecting these elements, but these elements keep being welcomed into the protest. Because so-called moderate organisers are trying to maintain a big tent, and a big tent that includes these very, very nasty elements.”

It’s been a wee while, but this rhetoric has grown no more logically coherent in the years since September 11. How many times were so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ held responsible for the actions of a minority? How many times were mosque leaders, Islamic organisations and random individuals expected to denounce or apologise for the handful of deranged fundamentalists in their community? How many times did their attempts to do so get far less attention than the unrepresentative self-promotion of fringe fanatics?

Of course, Godfery would never dream of applying this line of reasoning to the Muslim community, because his world view allows him (indeed, requires him) to see them as humans; oppressed ones, at that. To this day he rejects attempts to apply this argument to the anti-TPPA campaign.

He certainly never applied it to the 2019 Ihumātao land occupation, where protesters assaulted and spat on police and racially abused those who looked “foreign”. Where were the calls to reject these nasty elements when they were shouting at people of South Asian descent to “fuck off back to your own country?”

Apparently some protests are more entitled to good faith than others.

In contrast to the hysterics, it’s more accurate to describe a protest like the Freedom Convoy as a lightning rod. The same was true of the anti-TPPA campaign and Occupy before it, and no doubt will be true of others to come. Events like these attract a disparate array of ideas and individuals, including many which  are inarticulate, extreme, or delusional. The structurelessness and leaderlessness of the movement makes it difficult for most New Zealanders to understand what they’re doing and why, but when asked to explain themselves on camera or in print, very few have responded with a Roman salute.

Some oppose the vaccines entirely, but not all. Most have said they don’t want to be told what to put in their bodies, they want freedom, and they’re angry to have lost their jobs because of the mandates.

Those who insist this is a white supremacist uprising should do their best to produce a crowd photo from Parliament that doesn’t feature quite a few Māori faces. Just one will do. While they’re at it, they can track down a picture without at least one tino rangatiratanga flag. The rest of us will wait with bated breath.

Clearly the protestors are in a minority, and their cause may well be utterly wrong. However, as unfashionable as this view has become in some quarters, it remains possible to disagree with someone without calling them a Nazi. Those who call themselves progressive yet call for police action against inconvenient dissent should take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Guest Post supplied via The Democracy Project

The topline details are here.

Party Vote:

• Labour 42.3% (+1.1% from last poll)
• National 38.4% (+5.4%)
• ACT 6.6% (-4.9%)
• Greens 6.3% (-4.4%)
• TOP 2.0%
• NZ First 1.5%
• Maori 1.0%

Seats

• Labour 54 (-11 from election)
• National 49 +16)
• ACT 8 (-2)
• Greens 8 (-2)
• Maori 1 (-1)

The Herald reports:

An Otago man who rammed a police car and chased an officer with an axe while yelling “Allahu Akbar” is being housed in a specialist prison unit with the Christchurch mosque shooter.

Ruairi Kern Taylor (26) is one of only 10 prisoners in the country in the Auckland-based Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit, which was designed especially for those with “extremist views”, in the wake of Brenton Tarrant’s shooting spree in 2019.

Tarrant and Taylor sound an ideal match for each other. They should have them share a cell.

Labour’s policy is that it will only approve sanctions against another country if they have been approved by the UN.

Russia is about to invade Ukraine and start a slaughter there.

They of course have a veto on the UN Security Council so will veto any sanctions.

So Labour’s policy will be that they will only agree to sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine, if Russia itself agrees to the sanctions!

P.J. O’Rourke has died. I was lucky enough to be invited to a dinner a few years in Auckland where he spoke, and he was brilliant. The whole evening in fact will brilliant.

He was a genuinely funny guy who could make you laugh out loud, while also making a point (he was libertarian).

Some of his most famous early articles include How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink. His books “Give War a Chance” and “Parliament of Whores” are must reads.

He will be sadly missed by millions, including me.

Professor Tim Hazeldine writes:

Even without the patently loony proposal to dig a long tunnel under Sandringham Rd, we have here a proposed “light” rail project that will cost New Zealand’s three million taxpayers between three and five thousand dollars each. This for the benefit of about 30,000 Auckland commuters, to improve their access to the higher-paid jobs in the CBD, if that’s still what they want to do.

What a summary. Three million of us will pay $5,000 each to fund a project that will benefit 30,000 commuters in Auckland.

I can’t wait until September!

As expected, Phil Goff has announced he won’t seek a third term as Mayor of Auckland. This graph partially explains why:

Goff came in with a public that liked him when elected in 2016 and in his first year of 2017. But after his first 18 months in office it all went wrong. His favourability declined massively. It did recover in 2020 but fell away again in 2021.