Racist party wants to ban Maori word

When John Key decided to have a referendum to change our nations flag, which cost the taxpayer well in excess of $26 million, it was widely criticised as a complete waste of money, not only by the left, but also by patriots right across New Zealand.

You would therefore hope that the National Party would have learnt a valuable lesson from that debacle and consequently not propose any further silly changes that don’t align with public sentiment.

However it appears that National, under the terribly misguided leadership of Judith Collins, hasn’t learnt a damn thing.

Today, Newsroom reported:

National MP floats ban on public sector using ‘Aotearoa’

National MP Stuart Smith has found himself advocating a crackdown on public sector use of te reo in a war on a phantom name change, Marc Daalder writes

Analysis: New Zealand's sleek black passports could undergo a revamp to remove the prominent placement of the word 'Aotearoa' - if National Party MP Stuart Smith had his way.

The proposal to prohibit government departments from using 'Aotearoa' in any context is the latest development in Smith's bizarre attack on changing the name of New Zealand to Aotearoa or Aotearoa New Zealand. This is a war against a phantom enemy, however, as the Government says it has no plans to formally change the name of the country, and the use of Aotearoa by the public sector long predates the Labour government.

This is perhaps the dumbest proposal ever to be made by the National Party, which is really saying something when you consider that the blue “team” recently advocated for higher unemployment just to keep wages low.

This deferral to a Trumpian "some people are saying" excuse was repeated by National Party Leader Judith Collins.

"If you look at most of the government agencies, they're now changing it. The Prime Minister changes the way she talks about - you barely ever hear her talk about New Zealand these days," she said.

"I think it is becoming [an official change], that's what people are saying."

You can kind of understand why Crusher might feel the need to compete for the racist vote, being that Act Party leader David Seymour is now a more preferred Prime Minister than she is, even amongst National Party supporters.

Even so, proposing a costly referendum to ban the word Aotearoa is incredibly ignorant, especially when you consider the numerous benefits New Zealand attains from using Te reo Māori. This isn't just an advantage in terms of our own identity as a South Pacific nation, it's also a boon on the world stage as something that sets us apart because of its uniqueness.

When asked about Smith's proposal on Tuesday, ACT Party Leader David Seymour - who now enjoys more personal support among prospective National voters than Collins herself - hit the nail on the head.

"Look, I just think, ultimately, Stuart Smith needs to focus on bigger issues," he said.

Seymour better be careful. He wouldn’t want to ruffle the feathers of his racist supporters again. Many of them couldn't handle the Act Party leader even mentioning the word Aotearoa when the far right party ran a thoughtless "Make Aotearoa Great Again" campaign just before Waitangi Day. In fact Seymour's white supremacist supporters completely spat the dummy about it.

Kiwis are tired of being shut down. #demandthedebate Judith Collins has backed a call for a referendum on whether New Zealand should be called Aotearoa - despite using the term herself while in Government. https://t.co/14CA9xRQF9

— Judith Collins (@JudithCollinsMP) August 3, 2021

What we don’t need in Aotearoa New Zealand however is another competition between Act and National to see whose the most bigoted, which would again be an unwise attempt to normalise racism within our political discourse.

Because not only is it damaging to our own psyche as a highly diverse and multicultural nation, it would also damage our international reputation as well…and that’s not something any Kiwi, no matter what their skin colour, should be supporting.

Mass vaccination event wasn’t a shambles

If you were a food critic, would you give a restaurant a bad review before you’d even tasted a single bite of their food? Similarly, if you were a referee, would you call a game before it had even begun? Of course you wouldn’t, because that would be an utterly unfair and highly unprofessional thing to do.

However that’s exactly what the National Party and many mainstream media outlets have been doing lately. A good example of this took place last week, when National decided that the mass vaccination event which was being held at the Vodafone Events Centre over the weekend was going to be a failure even before a single vaccine dose had been administered.

On Wednesday, the National Party reported:

Government’s Vaccine Rollout A Shambles

The Government’s excruciatingly slow and chaotic vaccine rollout shows it has no idea how to get the lifesaving vaccine to New Zealanders, Leader of the Opposition Judith Collins says.

“And this weekend’s mass vaccination event is indicative of just how much of a debacle the Government’s rollout has been.

“Their bright idea was to bus vulnerable people in South Auckland to the events centre in Manukau to get the jab.

“It’s no surprise the initial take up was so pathetic that the invitation had to be extended beyond the target group to get the numbers up.

These accusations were of course entirely premature, being that the National Party’s press release was made two days before the vaccination event was even due to start.

It’s really no surprise that Crusher has yet again been proven wrong! In fact she pretty much has egg perpetually on her face these days.

Despite the National Party trying to deter people from getting a jab by saying the event was going to be a shambles, the mass vaccination event has by all accounts been a resounding success.

Today, RNZ reported:

Mass vaccination event hailed as 'huge success' by organisers

A three-day mass vaccination event wrapped up in South Auckland last night with more than 15,500 people given their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

More than 5600 got inoculated on Sunday - the last day of the event - at the Vodafone Events Centre in Manukau. Organisers are calling it an "overwhelming success" and feedback from those getting the jab has been mostly positive.

People registered at the nearby Manukau Institute of Technology before hopping on a bus which took them to the events centre, then brought them back after their vaccination.

Amanda Maplesden spoke to RNZ as she waited for a ride back to the campus.

"It's been very efficient and everyone is very nice and it's yeah totally impressive... We now feel like Covid's actually starting to not rule our lives anymore," she said.

Such is their desperation to become politically relevant again that Judith Collins was spitting venom at problems that only exist in her befuddled imagination. In fact it’s almost as if the National Party wants New Zealand to fail in its fight against Covid-19 just so they can claim that their response to the pandemic would’ve been better.

Of course it wouldn’t have been, because opening up our borders as National wanted to do even before a vaccine was properly developed would have been a complete disaster!

This hit and miss approach to politics is one of the reasons why the blue “team” continues to poll so badly. Because when all you’ve got is fake news that even a five year old can see through, no amount of spin can repair the damage done to Crusher’s credibility…not even when a biased mainstream media is invariably entirely on the right-wings side.

Collins is crushing her own credibility

Even before Judith Collins became overlord of the National Party, you could tell there was a huge ideological divide between her questionable values and those of the party’s former leaders. And just over a year after becoming the opposition's de facto leader, that chasm between Crusher and what her party once stood for couldn’t be more apparent.

Under her misguided leadership, the National Party have not only been campaigning against policy that they themselves enacted while in power, they're also criticising law and order initiatives that Judith Collins had implemented when she was a Cabinet Minister of John Key's neoliberal Government.

It’s an unprecedented political situation that senior political reporter David Fisher delves into with some much-needed insight and detail.

On Friday, the (pay-walled) NZ Herald reported:

National's new tough on crime campaign uses bad data, cherry-picked stats and attacks a justice scheme Judith Collins helped set up

A new social media campaign by the National Party on law and order has criticised a strategy aimed at curbing crime that was set up when Judith Collins was a Cabinet minister overseeing it.

The criticism is based on linking Labour Party policies to a quote from police stating "arrest is now the exception" that fails to explain the comment was made in relation to some low-level offending that goes before iwi community panels. 

…

Collins, the National Party leader whose image fronts the social media campaign, was Minister of Police in 2010, then Minister of Justice in 2014, when her officials began an evaluation of the programme.

The evaluation was reported back in 2016, when Collins was again Minister of Police, and has since been rolled out across the country.

This is a shocking indictment of just how ideologically blind the blue "team" has become.

Not only is National ignoring irrefutable evidence with their unrelenting tough on crime dogma, they're also attacking law and order policies that Crusher Collins had previously authorised in her capacity as a Minister of the Crown.

But that’s not the only thing the National Party are getting entirely wrong in their fervour to remain politically relevant. They’re also completely disregarding what the New Zealand Police are saying concerning changes to reported crime statistics. 

Analysis of other areas targeted in National's social media post - increased victimisation and claims of gang numbers increase - appeared to show selective use of data or a reliance on discredited data.

On gang numbers, this and other social media posts had seen National push the claim gang numbers had increased despite police saying the data could not be used to show actual numbers of gang members.

An interview request to Collins on the claims in the social media campaign resulted in a statement - from her office - attributed to the party's police spokesman Simeon Brown.

You know your party has lost a lot of talent when your tight five consists of Simeon Brown. pic.twitter.com/bnGDrVDEEw

— Damian Christie (@damianchristie) July 16, 2020

The list was started in 2016 as an intelligence tool to monitor those in or associated with gangs and had been added to as police awareness grew. The number of people on the list had gone from 5343 in 2016 to 8061 last month.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says the National Gang List does not provide statistical insight into gang numbers.

The growth in numbers largely reflected increasing awareness by police of those with gang links. It also showed - as Commissioner Andrew Coster had acknowledged - how difficult it was to be removed from the list when an association with a gang ended, including through death.

However instead of believing the Police Commissioner like normal grownups, the National Party is busy intentionally burying their heads in the sand and trying to make mountains out of molehills. They are in effect increasing the anxiety already felt about crime within our communities, which isn’t just a socially foolish thing for elected officials to do; it’s morally reprehensible as well.

On victimisations, Brown provided data showing serious assault resulting in injury had doubled under the current government from 10,679 in 2017 to 21,344 in 2020.

It was an increase police had previously linked to new family violence offences introduced in December 2018 that "resulted in police recognising and recording these more serious offences".

"It has also resulted in the realignment of some domestic common assaults into these new offences."

The new offences came in under the Family Violence Act which was originally introduced to Parliament under the National government as the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill.

Data shows the number of incidents in which people have been affected by crime to be stable around 265,000 victimisation.

It would be good to see the National Party actually holding the Government to account with some valid arguments for a change instead of crying wolf all the time. Because without a properly functioning opposition that isn’t hell bent on fomenting fear just to get attention, we cannot hope to tackle the more pressing issues that need to be addressed in New Zealand.

Government must ban synthetic fertilisers

ECan’s science director Dr Tim Davie

Now I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the use of synthetic fertilisers on farms is polluting our water supplies. In fact the problem has become so bad that in some areas high levels of nitrates have made the water carcinogenic to drink.

But what’s even worse is that the regional councils tasked with keeping people safe by monitoring the levels of pollution in our water are fudging the stats in order to try and hide the true extent of the problem.

They are in effect placing the profits from intensive farming ahead of the health and wellbeing of the general population, which is of course an entirely unacceptable thing for duly elected officials to do.

Yesterday, Newsroom reported:

‘Tricky’ council masks nitrate effect, Mike Joy says

Environment Canterbury is ignoring its own data to cover-up nitrate pollution, freshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy says. It’s a claim the regional council rejects.

Last Friday, ECan, as it’s known, released its annual groundwater quality survey, which showed that between 2011 and 2020, 47 percent of wells (118) had either likely increasing or very likely increasing nitrate-nitrogen concentrations.

This is important because high nitrate in groundwater can pose health risks to people drinking it. When it flows through to waterways and lakes it can kill fish, and cause excessive weed growth and algal blooms.

Intensive farming is one of the main reasons why New Zealand has such polluted waterways. It’s also why we have such high levels of colorectal cancer, because nitrate pollution has been shown to be carcinogenic to human beings.

So you can understand why certain people, including councils that are predominated by old white farmers, would want to downplay or cover-up this kind of information.

Some ECan well records stretch back to 1989 but the data are not used. In that way, Joy says, the “snapshot” survey uses “tricky stats”.

When he ran the numbers on ECan’s groundwater data two years ago, he found the trends for degraded wells were more pronounced than were being reported, at about two-thirds.

“They’re doing everything they can to gild the lily,” Joy says. “And if they were to stop that, and actually use the full-time record, and not try to do this ‘just 10 years’ bit, then they would actually get some truth around what’s happening.”

(The ECan report also notes its trends differ from those on the Land, Air, Water Aotearoa website because it uses different time periods and sampling frequencies. “It’s the same data,” Joy says with bewilderment. “LAWA isn’t a separate body that collects its own data, it’s a housing point for regional council data.”)

The Canterbury Regional Council can therefore not be trusted to factually report on the true extent of the problem, and like most councils, have been caught using selective data in order to try and hide what is a major environmental and health catastrophe for New Zealand.

This isn’t just a problem in terms of polluted groundwater either; it’s a legal liability issue as well. Because without accurate data showing exactly how polluted the water has become, proving that synthetic fertilisers are the cause of people’s ill health is even more difficult.

A Danish study published in the International Journal of Cancer three years ago, which followed 2.7 million people over 23 years, found increased risk of colorectal cancer for those exposed to high nitrate concentrations.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world.

Environmental groups in this country are using the Danish study to call for a 1 milligram per litre limit for nitrate in waterways. (The study, which suggests a threshold of 0.87mg/L for nitrate nitrogen, found a statistically significant increased risk above 3.87mg/L.)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) drinking water standard is 11.3mg/L, adopted as this country’s maximum acceptable value, after which bottle-fed babies are at an increased risk of blue baby syndrome.

In my opinion, the New Zealand Government should listen to the latest science on this issue and adopt a 0.87mg/L nitrate limit. This will of course render most of our aquifers unusable for tap water. But that’s a better price to pay than having numerous people suffering from ill health from pollution that is costing millions if not billions of taxpayer dollars each year to treat.

Clearly clean drinking water should be a fundamental human right and farmers should be the ones to pay for taking it away. But instead of realising that they’re legally liable for polluting our water and causing people cancer, the farmers are continuing to use synthetic fertilisers like there's no tomorrow.

Greenpeace has recently run nitrate testing in various parts of rural Canterbury, at which 450 samples have been tested, and in Southland. Abel, who has attended the testing, says people shouldn’t be left wondering.

“People trust the health limit is 11.3mg/L, that if they’re under that limit then, so far as the official word is, they’re avoiding health risk. The emerging science tells us something very different to that.”

ECan says it contacted the owners of all wells with concentrations over 11.3mg/L. (The highest recorded concentration was 22mg/L.) Most are not used for drinking water, groundwater science manager Carl Hanson said last week. Some owners have installed filters, others have replace their wells.

…

“The authorities need to stop worrying about covering their arses and think about their first obligation,” Abel says, “which is to make sure that the public are properly informed and advised of the potential health risks.”

He adds: “They need to face up to the fact that what we’ve done with 30 years of a near seven-fold increase in synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use and a doubling of the dairy herd, is we are in the process of turning people’s drinking water carcinogenic.”

The aquifers will remain polluted though, perhaps for thousands if not millions of years. That’s why it’s imperative that synthetic fertilisers aren’t allowed to pollute the few remaining untainted groundwater supplies we have left in New Zealand, or continue to make the situation worse in aquifers that have already been polluted.

The only way to effectively do that is for the Government to place a total ban on the use of synthetic fertilisers. Because without a ban, the farmers and councils will assuredly continue to place profits ahead of people's health and wellbeing, which is something that must not be allowed to continue indefinitely.

Simon Bridges cannot be trusted

You may recall former National Party leader Simon Bridges gaining a lot of public attention last month after claiming he was a witness to a gang fight. The former Crown Prosecutor made a huge song and dance about it all over Facebook and Twitter while also attacking the Government with allegations that Labour was allowing the gang problem to get out of control.

Bridges dominated the news cycle for weeks with his political attacks and elaborate story telling, and even after the Police went public to categorically state that there wasn’t a gang fight as Bridges alleged, he continued to assert that a violent incident had definitely occurred at the Tauranga hospital carpark.

However what was even more of a political misstep was that after a few days of Simon Bridges doubling down and digging himself into an even deeper hole, the current leader of the National Party also got in on the act by trying to back up her embattled MP, which in hindsight was indeed a very foolish thing for Judith Collins to do.

In June, Newshub reported:

National leader Judith Collins defends Simon Bridges from 'extraordinarily unkind far-left' over gang fight claims

Bridges has the support of his boss, who told Magic Talk the backlash was a result of "the freedom that the far-left gives itself to be extraordinarily unkind". 

Collins says she believes Bridges that a violent gang fight occurred in the car park. 

"Simon's father is clearly very unwell and if Simon says he saw a gang fight going on, and his wife saw it too, I believe him. I can't understand why people would think that someone would make that up," she said. 

"I also find it just deeply offensive that people who came in after or didn't see it suddenly say they know what happened when they weren't there. If he says it happened, in my opinion it did."

 

Unfortunately for Collins’ credibility, a report into the incident has found that the 'extraordinarily unkind far-left’ were absolutely correct to call Simon Bridges a liar, because there was in fact no gang fight at all. It was a completely made up scenario by a politician who has a history of lying…a fiction so that Bridges could score cheap political points with the get tough on crime crowd.

Yesterday, the NZ Herald reported:

Investigation documents on Simon Bridges' hospital gang brawl claims released

An investigation has found gang members were not involved in a carpark scuffle at Tauranga Hospital last month.

The incident gained national attention after Tauranga MP Simon Bridges said on social media he witnessed a fight between gang members at the hospital on June 12.

Bridges' account of events differed from other witnesses who told the Bay of Plenty Times gang members were not causing trouble and a separate incident over a car park had taken place. Police also had no details of gang members being involved.

The timeline was released to the Bay of Plenty Times under the Official Information Act. The health board would not release video footage, citing privacy reasons.

Between 2.14pm and 2.58pm, a patched Mongrel Mob member and a person in a brown hoodie helped a female jump-start her car parked outside the emergency department.

By 3.11pm all people involved had driven away. The DHB report states this was "not deemed an incident as neither security, nor the hospital co-ordinator were aware of anything untoward".

Get that...a gang member at the hospital was helping a woman to start her car, and Bridges embellished that good deed into a gang fight where someone was being badly beaten up. This just goes to show what a terrible judge of character Crusher Collins truly is, especially now that a thorough report into the incident has been released which categorically shows that Bridges was lying simply to gain attention, a bit like a petulant child.

But what’s really off about all this is that the mainstream media isn’t going to pressure Collins into holding Bridges to account for his calculated deceit. Instead, all we’ll get is this one NZ Herald report that's behind a pay-wall, which is a clear sign that the biased MSM is trying to bury the story.

In contrast, if a left-wing politician had been caught misleading the Police about violent gang members, the MSM would be dragging on them for months. In fact with blood in the water, they wouldn’t stop until there was a resignation.

If the shoe were on the other foot, Crusher Collins would be demanding that charges be laid against a politician who was clearly wasting Police time by making false statements.

What this goes to show is just how terribly duplicitous National Party politicians really are, especially when it comes to all things concerning law and order. According to them, the rules of accountability simply don’t apply to the right wing. 

Despite this injustice, the court of public opinion won't be so kind when judging the corruption of Simon Bridges, who has most definitely brought Parliament into disrepute and therefore should resign for his continued and unrepentant dishonesty.

Piers Morgan - Arsehole of the Week

If you're lucky, you wouldn't have heard of a guy called Piers Morgan. He’s a self-absorbed and opinionated hack from England who’s made a career out of making offensive remarks, which he more often than not targets at younger woman of colour.

Morgan, who is well past his prime as a political commentator, has a general theme to his personal attacks, and that is to denigrate any outspoken or successful leaders of popular transformative movements in order to try and close them down.

In fact this is a common trope by active racists all around the world, who attempt to side-track the public discourse by essentially cock-blocking the conversation with their targeted insults or controversial reckons.

Of course one of the most proficient users of this divisive tactic is Piers Morgan, who once again displayed his inherent bigotry yesterday by criticising a star United States athlete called Simone Biles, who withdrew from the women's gymnastics team final at the Tokyo Olympics for mental health reasons.

Yesterday, the NZ Herald reported:

Piers Morgan criticises Simone Biles' decision to quit final

Outspoken British commentator Piers Morgan has weighed in on US star athlete Simone Biles' decision to quit the women's team gymnastics final in Tokyo.

Biles made the decision just minutes into the event, later telling reporters that she had been battling mental health issues and "fighting all those demons".

"It's just me in my head," she said. "I have to focus on my mental health and not jeopardise my health and wellbeing.

"We have to protect our body and our mind.

Which is exactly what a top athlete should do to ensure they can continue to perform at their best and excel in their chosen sport. Morgan using the same old ploy to get attention by criticising a young coloured woman just goes to show what a dinosaur he actually is, particularly when it comes to modern training techniques for athletes at the top of their game.

Are ‘mental health issues’ now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport? What a joke.
Just admit you did badly, made mistakes, and will strive to do better next time.
Kids need strong role models not this nonsense.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 27, 2021

Obviously Simone Biles is doing exactly the right thing and being a good role model for her fans and fellow athletes alike, who shouldn’t be pressured into ignoring their mental health by grey-haired idiots like Piers Morgan. He assuredly is an out-dated egotist who should be ignored wherever possible.

Morgan doubled down, and blamed social media.

"Athletes are now deemed more courageous, inspiring & heroic if they lose or quit then if they win or tough it out, which is ridiculous," he fumed.

"I blame Twitter's virtue-signallers for fuelling this culture of celebrating weakness. The real world doesn't think like that."

Some took him to task for criticising Biles' decision to walk away given the public tantrum that saw him quit British TV show Good Morning Britain earlier this year.

But Morgan batted away critics with a sarcastic response.

Piers Morgan is clearly a bonafide fuckwit! He’s also a complete snowflake when it comes to being confronted for his numerous flaws…and just like most narcissists cannot handle even the slightest amount of criticism in return.

Hello pot, meet kettle. 🙄 pic.twitter.com/zRuvvbNg7s

— Amy Freeman-Britton (@chilpark) July 27, 2021

Sadly for Piers Morgan, this prestigious Arsehole Award is the closest he'll ever get to an Olympic medal. He may therefore like to reflect on his prize and just how much of a political pariah he’s become. Because without some much needed self-awareness, the world may never get a mental health break from the contemptuous old fool known as Piers Morgan, until the day he dies.