The real reason Jacinda Ardern resigned

You’ve really got to wonder at the introspection, or lack thereof, from much of the mainstream media post Jacinda Ardern stepping down. Some so-called journalists haven’t even taken a breath before once again putting the boot in, which clearly shows their inherent bias and lack of any misgivings about fueling the unprecedented levels of abuse Ardern has unfairly received during her tenure as Prime Minister of New Zealand.

In light of the vile threats that have plagued her, Ardern’s decision to resign is entirely understandable. Some of these threats were even directed towards Ardern's young daughter Neve, making it a decision about serving her country or protecting family. It's therefore doubtful that any level-headed Kiwi, particularly those of the female persuasion, would begrudge such a difficult decision to make.

Today, RNZ reported:

Jacinda Ardern will need 'more ongoing protection than any PM in NZ's history'

Departing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will need more ongoing security and protection than any former New Zealand PM, according to political scientist and former intelligence worker Paul Buchanan.

“Let’s start by saying things have changed dramatically since the day John Key stepped down, and one might say fundamentally,” Buchanan said.

“The security requirements for ex-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern are going to be far tougher than any previous prime minister – by a lot.”

Threats against Ardern are well documented and were recorded to have tripled between 2020 and 2022. In mid-January police started investigating after leaflets threatening to “eradicate” Ardern were delivered to houses in Northland.

A good example from the various articles written by those trying to absolve their role in provoking this unprecedented amount of resentment being directed towards Jacinda Ardern, which has ultimately resulted in the Prime Ministers resignation, is this piece from 1 News reporter Jessica Mutch McKay.

 

Last Thursday, 1 News reported:

A surprise Ardern’s resignation came so soon

She said that being prime minister takes a lot of hunger, and "the prime minister has decided today that on her own terms, she's just not anymore".

Mutch McKay entirely ignoring the real reasons for the resignation and claiming that Ardern is no longer hungry enough to be Prime Minister is another misdirect to take the focus off of her own misreporting.

And here is muckraker Tova O'Brien claiming that Ardern has resigned simply to save face.

Jacinda Ardern wouldn't have quit if she genuinely thought she could win

Cut out the poison and all will be well but I struggle to truly believe that. Elections are presidential - the likely candidates for her job Hipkins, Wood and Allen are all good but they aren’t Ardern good.

She was the reason there was still a real contest in this election - she was the star power despite many in the country turning on the government.

Like John Key before her, Jacinda Ardern has chosen to protect her legacy and save face in the face of a loss.

So, Ardern is apparently something to be cut out, but also the only chance Labour had of winning the next election. Talk about a ridiculous contradiction in terms and a sickening way to describe a world-renowned leader. I mean how exactly does the largely irrelevant O'Brien even begin to justify likening anyone, particularly a Prime Minister of New Zealand, to cancer?

Of course they, like most of the right wing propagandists who are trying to reclaim the narrative, are at pains to avoid the real reasons for Ardern stepping down. In effect dirty politics has won again, which is why the right wing keep using such underhanded tactics to undermine the left.

The deluded O'Brien also likening Ardern’s justifiable decision with Key’s downfall is laughable, being that the mainstream media has never divulged the real reason behind his resignation. But sure, rewriting history as well as looking at the tea leaves to predict the future apparently now passes as political analysis in this country.

Even the usually level headed Duncan Greive decided to have a brain fart about the mainstream medias continued biased reporting against Jacinda Ardern.

On Saturday, The Spinoff reported:

Jacinda and the media: a very complicated relationship

For years, her extraordinary communication skills buoyed her leadership. But then the public mood changed – and the media followed suit.

 

Obviously much of the mainstream media has been terribly negative towards the Labour Party and Ardern throughout their previous two terms of governance, even when the Prime Ministers public opinion polling eclipsed that of any previous or likely future leaders.

As well as the bad takes from a large number of New Zealand’s biased political commentators, a few American fools and other offshore based idiots have been trying to interfere in our political discourse. In particular Australian magnate Rupert Murdoch’s gang of disinformation merchants have been attempting to sway public opinion against the New Zealand Labour led Government. But thankfully not everyone is putting up with this kind of unjustified political shenanigans.

Here is some good fact checking by Alan Austin, who debunks a number of their preposterous claims.

Also on the other side of the coin, Alison Mau penned an excellent article about the misogyny all female leaders face, and the abuse Jacinda Ardern in particular has endured.

 

Yesterday, Stuff reported

Shame on our misogyny: It's no wonder Jacinda Ardern was driven from office 

Even as she announced her resignation, the pack was howling about the emotion she struggled to contain. The common denominator being hate directed at her personally, rather than the actions of her government.

As she resigned, Ardern avoided naming the wave of abuse as a contributing factor. She has not talked about the toll these vile attacks have taken on her and her family - indeed, she cannot talk about the thing that often drives women from positions of public power.

She can't name the evil as she steps down because If she does, she loses. Her attackers would have whipped her for it. As Massey University School of Management Senior Lecturer Dr Suze Wilson put it, she could not admit to it, because it would have told the trolls they'd won.

 

In my opinion, it seems likely that the vast majority of voters will correctly understand Ardern’s predicament and in light of the unwarranted abuse she’s received provide Labour with a third term in power. It will certainly harden the left wings resolve in the lead up to the next election.

We may even see some steadfast right-wing supporters change their voting preferences, being that their wealth has in recent years markedly increased thanks to Labour and the tactics from the right wing are largely unpalatable. Obviously most business leaders wouldn’t have prospered if a National government were mismanaging the country during the Covid-19 pandemic.

And that’s where the right wing’s problems generally reside. Not only is the opposition leader entirely flat footed and promising economic death by a thousands cuts, most voters will likely sympathise with a left wing leader who has always had Aotearoas best interests at heart and clearly deserved far better treatment from the fourth estate.

We obviously have political parties in New Zealand with vested interests who’ve been actively undermining the current government via the mainstream media. They’ve effectively been sabotaging our progress in order to benefit themselves and bolster their own political prospects.

The irony is they’ve got what they wanted, but the fallout from their continued negative campaigning may just upset their chance to once again cook the countries books. So let's not have anymore premature narratives solely bassed on the right wings' dodgy polling. The election isn’t a slam-dunk by any means and the National and Act Party's don't have it in the bag, because as we all know, a week can be a very long time in politics.

Sue Grey - Arsehole of the Week

There really isn’t any nice way to say this, but Sue Grey is a despicable and loathsome person. Not only has she been promoting disinformation about vaccines in order to promote her own lawyers practice, the discredited anti-vaxxer is now at the centre of a controversy whereby she encouraged the parents of a sick baby to delay his life saving operation.

Of course someone who is permanently down the rabbit hole isn’t going to believe what the doctors or science says, which is that blood from vaccinated donors isn’t harmful and won’t vaccinate recipients. Instead, Grey is going to use misinformation to convince a couple of vulnerable parents to put the life of their sick baby in danger to further her own goals.

On Thursday, the BBC reported:

New Zealand places child in anti-vax blood case in custody

A New Zealand court has ordered a child at the centre of a case over blood transfusions from donors vaccinated against Covid-19 be taken into temporary custody by health officials.

The four-month-old boy is in a hospital in Auckland awaiting urgent treatment to correct a heart disorder.

His parents had blocked the operation and sought a court ruling that he receive blood from unvaccinated donors.

But the High Court ruled the operation was in the child's "best interest".

 

Grey and her accomplices went to extraordinary lengths to try and prevent this life saving surgery…an operation that has thankfully now gone ahead and been successful because of Court and Police intervention.

Justice Gault also rejected a request from the parents' lawyer, Sue Grey, that a tailored donor service with blood from exclusively unvaccinated donors be established.

Ms Grey said the long-term effects of the vaccine were "untested" and accused doctors of refusing to provide an alternate donor service for ideological reasons.

So Sue Grey wanted the state to establish an alternative blood donation system for the unvaccinated, which would have taken considerable time and resources to get off the ground.

Meanwhile the babies life was being put in danger because of her entirely unfounded and ideologically driven fears. It's no wonder Grey's political “career” with the failed New Zealand Outdoors Party has been such a disaster!

But lawyers for the state blood service said the establishment of any direct donor service would have been a "slippery slope" and would "damage an excellent blood service".

Citing evidence from New Zealand's chief medical officer, Justice Gault ruled that there was "no scientific evidence there is any Covid-19 vaccine-related risk from blood donated" by vaccinated donors.

The case has become a vector for anti-vaccine activists in New Zealand with demonstrators - many of whom carried placards - gathering outside the court before the ruling was delivered on Wednesday.

The idiot anti-vaccine activists might be annoying, but what really pisses me off about all this is that Grey will likely retain her lawyers status, even though a complaint about similar misconduct was lodged over a year ago.


On Friday, RNZ reported:

Complaint lodged against lawyer and anti-vaccination campaigner Sue Grey 18 months ago unresolved

In May last year Jacinta, whose surname RNZ agreed not to use, lodged a complaint about disinformation being spread or hosted on Grey’s social media site.

Jacinta told Checkpoint it was irresponsible of Grey to promote her controversial views while acting as a lawyer.

…

Law professor at the University of Auckland, Mark Henaghan, told Checkpoint he believed proving Grey had acted unethically was not straightforward.

Henaghan said there was a difference between misconduct and misinformation.

He said a misconduct complaint would require the person to be aware that what they were saying was untrue.

“Misconduct is defined as... conduct that reasonable lawyers would think is either disgraceful or dishonourable, or it’s a wilful and reckless contravention of the rules,” he said.

If this more recent unethical behaviour isn’t considered misconduct, I don’t know what would be?

Clearly Grey has stepped over the bounds of common sense and decency here by convincing two vulnerable parents that blood from vaccinated donors is unsafe, which is entirely untrue. Grey would know that her argument is untrue, but is continuing to promote falsehoods because of the attention she receives. And Grey is receiving a lot of attention, with all the mainstream right wing media working hard to promote her argument as somehow being valid.

Despite the MSM trying to resurrect Grey’s profile, she has clearly breached the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act by actively encouraging these vulnerable parents to stop a surgery that was required to save their babies life. She failed to declare her glaringly obvious conflict of interest for starters; a conflict of interest that should preclude her from taking on any cases whereby vaccination is a part of proceedings.

Unless lawyers and their associates want their profession to have a bad name, they really need to ensure that arseholes like Sue Grey are permanently disbarred. But unfortunately the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal hardly ever strikes off wayward lawyers for their misconduct, mainly because it’s an organisation set up to protect lawyers. Let’s hope they make an exception in this case.

Young people must be allowed to vote

Let me just start out by saying that young people must be allowed to vote. Not because they are more enlightened than previous generations, but because the earlier people become voters, the more likely they will continue to participate in democracy.

We have a serious problem in New Zealand with low voter turnout. Many believe that there’s simply no point in voting, because politicians will always look after their own vested interests first. However when enough people vote for progressive change, then the status quo must change as well.

Today, the BBC reported:

 

New Zealand Supreme Court rules voting age of 18 is discriminatory

New Zealand's Supreme Court has ruled that the country's current voting age of 18 is discriminatory, meaning parliament must discuss whether it should be lowered.

The case was brought by campaign group Make It 16, which wants the voting age reduced to include 16 and 17 year olds.

There is no doubt that young people have the most to lose when it comes to governments dragging their feet over their ineffectual environmental policy. The same can be said for social policy, whereby both National and Labour are happy to tinker around the edges while Rome effectively burns.

Following the ruling, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she personally supported reducing the voting age to 16, but added that "it is not a matter simply for me or even the government, any change in electoral law of this nature requires 75% of parliamentarian support".

Not all parties support the lowering of the voting age.

The centre-right National party opposes the move, while the Labour party is yet to state whether it would support a change in voting age or not.

Of course the opposition are opposing any changes. They are after all playing to their core supporters, namely old rich people who are stuck in their deluded ways. Clearly National and ACT are ageist parties hell bent on repressing the young, particularly when we’re talking about young people from ethnic minorities.

In fact the news that the Supreme Court supported young people’s voting rights couldn’t have come at a worse time for National Party leader, Christopher Luxon. After proposing failed boot camps as a solution to ram raids, Luxon then got on another decrepit high horse to blame parents for their children not attending school.

 

Yesterday, Newshub reported:

Christopher Luxon takes aim at parents, 'culture of excuses' for truancy crisis, but Jacinda Ardern fires back

Luxon's pointing the finger at parents and has no time for excuses.

"You chose to have these kids, you have to wake up at 7am, get your kids to school at 8am," he said.

"You have now got subsidised free lunches, free breakfasts, subsidised period products, subsidised school uniforms.

"There is no excuses. What we have in New Zealand is a culture of excuses."

Last week, Luxon put principals on notice.

He told AM: "There is a mixed standard of leadership across our schools and across our principals that actually means they're not focussing as strongly on getting kids to school as they can."

Talk about a vote loser. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern sides with teachers, parents and young people, Luxon is doing all he can to alienate entire sectors of the communities we live in. Young people aren’t the boggy men that the National Party needs to divide and conquer. Instead they will be a catalyst for change to ensure humanities survival.

The sooner our politicians realise this and vote accordingly to give young people democratic parity the better.

Wayne Brown - Arsehole of the Week

You’ve got to wonder at the mental capacity of Auckland Mayoral candidate, Wayne Brown, after he was exposed airing his childish grievances about senior NZ Herald reporter, Simon Wilson. I mean what exactly makes Mr Brown think that such disgusting comments are warranted, let alone to Newshub reporters who are duty bound to expose the arrogant narcissist for what he truly is?

Yesterday, Newshub reported:

Auckland Mayoral candidate Wayne Brown caught on camera saying he wants to glue pictures of journalist on urinals so people can 'pee on him'

Auckland Mayoral candidate Wayne Brown has been caught on camera calling a NZ Herald journalist a "prick", saying he was going to glue "little pictures of him on all the urinals" so people could "pee on him" if elected.

Brown made the comments while Newshub was filming with him this week and were played during Newshub Nation's Auckland Mayoral debate on Saturday.

His comments were directed at NZ Herald journalist Simon Wilson.

When asked about the comments during the debate, Brown told host Rebecca Wright: "I didn't mean to say it and I certainly didn't mean to do it in a way that would become public... and I'm sure he's said a few things about me that he probably didn't want to have public either."

The comments were made while Brown was being filmed as part of an interview with a Newshub journalist and he was wearing a microphone at the time.

The really sad thing here is that Brown’s egregious comments aren’t going to automatically disqualify him from being a mayoral candidate. That’s the unfortunate nature of politics in New Zealand…that you only need to be a wealthy white guy to gain a large chunk of unwarranted and unearned support from a largely self-centered electorate.

However Brown’s advisors, Matthew Hooton and National Party aligned strategist Tim Hurdle, must be rolling in their ideological graves right now. With another campaign disaster on his hands, Hooton in particularly is getting a name for himself as the man without the Midas touch. In fact the only good campaign move Hooton has ever made was to resign from Judith Collins’ clutches.

The right wing obviously has a serious problem with online campaigning, which seems highly adept at exposing their inanity and defunct belief systems. However the power of the Internet is somewhat limited when we’re talking about a NewstalkZB listening voter base that prefers to reside in privileged ignorance!

There’s no doubt that right wing supporters will dismiss Brown’s juvenile statements just like they ignored National Party MP Michael Woodhouse’s similar immaturity. But only the truly deluded could forget how Woodhouse proudly posed with a toilet seat that displayed former Labour MP Clare Curran’s face on it.

In 2020, the NZ Herald reported:

Labour MP Clare Curran reveals 'traumatised' impact of 'dirty politics' campaign

Outgoing MP Clare Curran says an image of a National MP posed with a toilet emblazoned with her face on it left her feeling "traumatised" and suffering from "humiliation".

Curran announced last year she would not re-stand at this year's election, closing a 12-year career in Parliament.

The outgoing Labour MP has revealed the alleged dirty politics she said was targeted with, and the toll it took emotionally as her political career came tumbling down, in an interview published today on The Spinoff.

The worst of it was in 2012, when she was sent photos from the National Party's Mainland Region conference, one showing fellow Dunedin-based MP, National's Michael Woodhouse, posed with a blue toilet seat with her face emblazoned on it.

The seat was reportedly used as a trophy for a debating competition.

In my opinion, those who revel in the sewer should have no place within our political institutions. In fact such gutter politics must be relegated and consigned to history. That’s why Wayne Brown should do the right thing and bow out of the race to become Auckland’s next Mayor. He won’t, which clearly makes him a complete and utter Arsehole!

It’s time to improve squatter’s rights in New Zealand

 

There is something that most Kiwis have in common. We usually care about each other and want to see everyone have a chance at a successful life. One of the exceptions to this rule is of course landlords, who more often than not will bleed their tenant’s dry, or simply evict them out of spite.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the Labour government recently implemented their Healthy Homes Standards, which became law on 1 July 2019. Many slumlords were so outraged about these improved standards, that instead of adhering to the affordable requirements to provide a warm and dry place for people to reside in, they simply evicted their tenants.

This has inevitably increased the number of homeless people in New Zealand, including those who now live in vehicles.

Yesterday, 1 News reported:

Number of children listed as living in cars more than 200

The number of children living in cars has gone up dramatically since the Government came to power.

Those on the ground are blaming rent prices and are pleading with the Government to do more.

The number of children listed as living in cars has gone from 51 at the end of 2017, to 228 in June this year.

The numbers are pulled when people apply for help from the Ministry of Social Development. People are asked where they're living and if they have children.

The number of people living in tents also climbed, with 21 at the end of 2017, up to 84 this June.

One of the solutions to this growing problem would be to increase squatter’s rights in New Zealand. We have lots of empty houses, many of them becoming derelict because of disuse and vandalism, and we have lots of homeless people who cannot afford to rent a house because the welfare system doesn’t provide enough money to those without an address for service.

Prior to 2013, taking possession of an abandoned house used to be legal in places like England and Wales. This meant in times of crisis, such as after the Second World War, people could still find accommodation and survive. But unfortunately the real estate industry has achieved too much influence over our politicians. The door was shut on the homeless in Great Britain, even though allowing people to occupy unused dwellings so they don’t become exposed to the elements is entirely the right thing to do.

The alternative is to have rough sleeping and more children living in vehicles, whereby they will struggle to attain an education and sustain their well-being, which will have lasting negative effects for them and society in general.

$4 million worth of mansion in Oriental Bay sits abandoned.

 

Similar to the Tories in England, unfortunately the National Party in New Zealand isn’t proposing any solutions to this growing problem. In fact their policies would make things worse. Along with proposing harsher sanctions on disabled beneficiaries, which would assuredly increase the number of people who cannot afford to pay their rent, the blue "teams" current leader, Christopher Luxon, is only interested in throwing stones at Jacinda Ardern.

Along with providing homeless people with more resources to attain a roof over their heads through improved squatter's rights, the Government should also implement an Empty House Levy to ensure property owners who aren’t utilising their assets properly are penalized appropriately. We don’t want lots of homeless people on the streets while perfectly good houses remain empty…and we don’t want Kiwi kids living in cars either.

Kelvyn Alp - Arsehole of the Week

Even if you only have a cursory interest in politics, it’s likely you’ve heard of an outfit called Counterspin Media, which is a disinformation programme that propagates fake news and encourages people to undertake severe acts of violence. Based along similar lines as Infowars, Counterspin is run by a trumped-up little fascist named Kelvyn Alp and (to a lessor degree) his misguided partner, Hannah Spierer.

 

Wikipedia reports:

Alp is a director of and programme host for Counterspin Media Limited. Counterspin streams on the Steve Bannon-led GTV network, whose content has been described as "a significant source of fake news and misinformation".

A Counterspin contributor interrupted a press conference by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in November 2021, loudly shouting misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, leading Ardern to temporarily halt the event.

Alp was an agitating force at the Convoy 2022 New Zealand protest, calling for the protestors to storm parliament and arrest MPs, while making multiple references to killing them.

The thing you need to keep in mind about failed politician Kelvyn Alp and his band of disinformation merchants is that they’re essentially cowards! Instead of actually working towards change, Alp tries to manipulate others into doing his dirty work for him because he’s too gutless to put himself in the firing line.

In effect Counterspin Media preys upon the disaffected and mentally unwell with extremist views designed to cause other people harm. But worse than that, Alp and his cohorts pretend to care about other people’s legitimate grievances to elicit support for their own objectives…far right objectives that will not help to resolve any problems New Zealand is currently facing.

Along with a number of other deluded and dangerous operatives, Kelvyn Alp’s activity to undermine our society was recently exposed in an excellent NZ On Air funded documentary called Fire and Fury, which was a look behind the scenes of the Parliamentary riots.

 

Our latest @StuffCircuit documentary, Fire and Fury: who's driving a violent, misinformed New Zealand - and why. #FireAndFury https://t.co/wqbAscI7KE

— Paula Penfold (@paulapenfold) August 13, 2022

 

What really clinched it for Kelvyn Alp winning this week’s Arsehole Award was his response to this entirely factual documentary. Instead of acknowledging any wrongdoing on his part, the conceited Alp went online and bleated for three hours in a live-stream…a diatribe where he even reiterated his threat to kill New Zealand politicians.

 

Last night a number of the conspiracy grifters featured in @NZStuff's Fire & Fury doco joined a three hour Counterspin Media episode to criticize the programme.

Here's Kelvyn Alp on the episode doubling down on his threats against the government: "I reckon you should hang them." pic.twitter.com/dfjh36o6qc

— Nick (@StrayDogNZ) August 14, 2022

 

In my humble opinion, Kelvyn Alp, who is assuredly a complete and utter arsehole, needs to be shut down before he encourages some poor deluded fool to actually kill someone.