Take the corrupt Shane Jones for instance, NZ First’s loudmouth-in-chief, who’s been parroting the tired old lie that Labour shut down the Marsden Point refinery. The truth? The refinery’s closure in 2021 was a commercial decision by its private owners, not a Labour policy. Jones knows this. His own coalition’s $7.3 billion feasibility study confirmed the Crown can’t afford to reopen it. Yet, he keeps flogging this dead horse, hoping voters won’t notice that most of Marsden Point refinery is already demolished. It’s cynical and lazy politicking, which insults people's intelligence.
Then there’s the fiction that Labour directly funnelled $2.7 million to the Mongrel Mob for a meth rehab programme. This whopper, gleefully amplified by propagandist bloggers and coalition MPs, conveniently ignores the facts. The funding went to a community-based rehab initiative, not the gang’s coffers, and was part of a broader health strategy to tackle meth addiction. Misrepresenting it as a gang handout is a cheap shot designed to inflame prejudice and dodge scrutiny of the coalition’s own limp efforts on addiction. When meth use has more than doubled over the past year, you'd expect some level of honest debate from government politicians to find solutions. Instead all we get is finger pointing and more lies.
Judith Collins, meanwhile, has been spinning her own twisted yarn, claiming Te Pāti Māori’s protest haka in Parliament stopped ACT MPs from voting on the Waitangi Tribunal bill. Rubbish! The haka disrupted proceedings, sure, but no vote was blocked. ACT MPs were free to cast their ballots. Collins’ exaggeration is yet another racist dog-whistle, painting Māori activism as a threat to democracy while deflecting from the coalition’s divisive Treaty policies. The mainstream media, lapping up her soundbites, only fuels the government’s distortion of the truth.
Speaking of media, how many times have we heard coalition MPs whining about National “inheriting a financial mess” from Labour? It’s a catchy line, dutifully echoed by outlets too spineless to fact-check. Reality check: Labour navigated a global pandemic, kept unemployment low, and left a fiscal deficit that National’s own tax cuts have since ballooned into the stratosphere. The “mess” narrative is just another lazy trope to justify the government's austerity and broken promises, like the cancer treatment funding National tried to quietly shelve. The subsequent Pharmac boost may have mitigated some criticism, but the delay and lack of transparency by the government has fuelled distrust in their decision making process.
Labour’s Chris Hipkins nailed it: taking away promised pay is a cut, plain and simple. Luxon’s claim that it’s just “fixing an unworkable system” is gaslighting, especially when Willis admitted the savings plug another budget hole. "Brooke van Velden has saved the budget" claimed ACT's David Seymour. Saved the budget by making low-waged women foot the bill for National's un-costed tax cuts and billion dollar handouts for landlords. This betrayal, rammed through under urgency, screams contempt for women workers...a contempt that is designed to keep everyone's wages low.
Other untruths abound. David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill was sold as “clarifying” the Treaty, but the Waitangi Tribunal correctly called it a breach of partnership principles, warning that it undermines Māori rights. ACT’s claim that it’s just “future-proofing” is a bald-faced lie! 18,000 petitioners and countless submissions saw through it. But still the ACT Party persists in trying to mislead the people.
This relentless dishonesty isn’t just politics as usual…it’s a wrecking ball for public faith in our political system. When government MPs blatantly lie with impunity, and media parrot their dishonest talking points, voters grow ever more cynical. Trust in Parliament, already at an all-time low, takes another hit. Politicians wonder why turnout at general elections is plummeting? But they only need look in the mirror. The Coalition of Chaos isn’t just governing poorly, it’s poisoning the well of democracy…a poison that will take many generations to remedy.
