New Zealand’s transformation from a country that was doing well by world standards, to a deeply divided society that is in decline.

We were told back in 2017, by Jacinda Ardern, that her government is the most open and transparent government we have ever had.

Ardern in her first formal speech to Parliament pledged: “This government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.”

Since her pledge to strengthen transparency and foster a more open and democratic society, her government has employed a large number of communications specialists and under their watch has maintained an iron grip on the control of information disseminated to the public.

At every level, the Government manipulates the flow of information with press conferences and announcements, which are often meaningless or repetitive and prevent sustained or detailed questioning.

The most open and transparent government that she promised appears to be pretty much non-existent in my opinion. This is partly because of the numbers of public relations staff that now seem to work to deflect and avoid, or answer questions from the electorate, in the most oblique manner possible.

Perhaps the most alarming trend is the almost complete refusal of government departments and agencies to allow the public to speak directly to staff.

The whole point of this communications strategy is to ensure that first and foremost, the government looks good and that the message is adequately controlled to make them look good.

It is the job of the media to act as the public’s watchdog and to ask the hard questions and hold the government to account on our behalf but that now seems to be a task that has been changed to one where the media has become another propaganda arm of the current government.

As a result of the Covid pandemic the government decided to set up what they called the Public Interest Journalism Fund. It was set up on the basis that it would offer financial support to the media organisations to counter the effects of the pandemic and if that was all it was I would support the fund 100%.

But in actual fact with the requirements for the media to access the financial support relying on their promotion of the government’s race based socialist agenda; I believe this fund is nothing more than the use of public funds to distribute government propaganda (or in other words corruption of the media) and as such I could never support it.

But unfortunately since Jacinda Ardern’s pledge to strengthen transparency and foster a more open and democratic society, it has now become much harder than ever to get information from this government.

Since that pledge was made by Jacinda we have also gone down the track of implementing many of the recommendations from the He Puapua report which are totally undemocratic.

In fact they are taking New Zealand down a path of race based co-governance by an unelected tribal elite on the basis of a “mythical partnership” requirement of the Treaty of Waitangi.

I say “mythical” deliberately because when you read the Treaty document there is no mention of partnership or anything that remotely resembles a partnership requirement.

As a result of their reliance on this mythical partnership requirement Jacinda’ s government have made many changes to legislation and have proposed more, that have significantly altered the fundamental principles upon which our country has been governed and on our democratic rights.

In a recent article, Muriel Newman from the New Zealand Centre for Political Research stated the following:

Climate change represents a major threat to New Zealand – but not because of the emissions produced by cows and sheep or from driving cars to the shops.

The biggest threat comes from the unhinged obsession of climate fanatics – including New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – who are trying to force damaging policies onto the country that will have zero impact on the climate but will devastate the fundamentals of our economy.

First, some background.

Last Monday, Statistics New Zealand revealed inflation had hit 7.3 percent – the highest level in 32 years. To deflect the negative publicity, the Finance Minister Grant Robertson called an unscheduled press conference the day before, to announce that the 25 cents a litre fuel tax exemption was being extended until January - to help ease the cost-of-living pressure on households: “We know that the rising price of fuel has a direct effect on inflation, and making these changes is a targeted approach to a root cause of the cost of living pressure being faced by Kiwi households.”

The Minister of Transport added: “Extending the reductions to fuel excise duty and road user charges will also help to reduce the fuel burden on the road transport sector, and in doing so keeping the cost of food and essential goods lower”.

Treasury was quoted, as estimating that lowering the price of fuel will reduce headline inflation by 0.5 percentage points in the June 2022 quarter.

The Minister’s claim that the timing of his announcement, late on a Sunday afternoon, was not orchestrated defies belief. Clearly Labour went into damage control to try to defuse the negative media narrative. They also took the unusual step of emailing their supporters to reassure them that they were taking appropriate action.

What all of this highlights, is the staggering hypocrisy of the Ardern Government. On the one hand, they are reducing fuel taxes to minimise the inflationary impact of rising fuel prices - while on the other hand they are progressing radical zero carbon goals, which are designed to drive fuel prices and inflation even higher.

With today’s carbon price, established through the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), sitting at around $75 a tonne, the carbon tax on petrol is almost 17 cents a litre and over 19 cents for diesel.

So how high does the Prime Minister want it to go?

According to the Climate Commission, to get to Jacinda Ardern’s “ambitious target of net-zero by 2050”, the Emission Trading Scheme’s carbon price would need to rise up to $250 a tonne.

Since every $20 increase in the per-tonne price of carbon results in the cost of petrol at the pump increasing by 5 cents, at $250 a tonne, the carbon tax on fuel would rise to over 60 cents a litre. On today’s prices, fuel would be pushed towards $3.50 a litre.

We now know only too well what the result of that will be - to use the Finance Minister’s words, “the rising price of fuel has a direct effect on inflation” and is “a root cause of the cost-of-living pressure being faced by Kiwi households.”

But it's not just fuel prices that are being driven higher by the rising price of carbon - electricity prices are as well.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is Bryan Leyland, a power systems engineer, who explains that if the government continues its pursuit of carbon zero, ‘escalating power prices and frequent shortages seem inevitable’:

“At the moment, the carbon tax is about $75 per tonne of CO2 and the Climate Commission predicts that it could go as high as $250 a tonne. Every $50 increase in carbon tax increases the cost of generation at Huntly by at least 2.5¢ and 1.5¢ at a gas fired station. ‘Green’ geothermal stations also pay carbon tax on the carbon dioxide they emit.

“Between 2004 and 2018 wholesale electricity market prices increased at a rate above inflation – from about 7¢ to about 10¢. In 2018 prices jumped to about 15¢ and have been relatively steady at more than 20¢ for the last two years. This doubling of the wholesale price is already showing up in commercial and industrial tariffs and retail tariffs must soon increase. The economic damage will be huge and the underprivileged will be even worse off.”

What all of this means is that if Jacinda Ardern continues on with her ‘obsession’ of wanting to be seen as a global climate change leader, our economy will be sacrificed through the harshest restrictions in the world.

The process is already underway, with climate objectives increasingly embedded throughout our whole regulatory and legislative framework.

Just last week the Climate Change Minister, Green Party co-leader James Shaw, signalled his intention to tighten up the ETS to force the country’s big emitters to “make a larger contribution towards meeting our goal of building a net-zero future.”

To achieve this, he intends reducing the availability of the “industrial allocation” of free emissions units, that were introduced when the manufacturing sector was first included in the ETS - in order to protect emissions-intensive and trade-exposed businesses from unregulated foreign competitors.

The Ministry for the Environment consulted on this proposal last year, and the feedback was alarming. The first cause of concern was that the number of proforma submissions from environmental activists clearly indicated that the ETS is seen as a political lever to close down industry in New Zealand. And the second, is how vulnerable our key industries are to ETS changes.

Affected parties who manufacture critical products in New Zealand, such as cement and fertiliser, claim Minister Shaw’s proposed changes may force them to close down - not only at a cost of hundreds of jobs, but also resulting in the importation of replacement products from overseas countries with no emissions controls.

New Zealand’s only cement works, Whangarei-based Golden Bay Cement, which employs around 550 staff, warned that changing the baseline and allocation settings, would increase production costs above the costs of imports, “which will shut down New Zealand operations in favour of imports - increasing global emissions as a result.”

Winstone Pulp International, which employs 281 staff at the Karioi Pulp Mill near Ohakune, says phasing out Industrial Allocations would erode their competitive situation internationally and result in processing capacity being transferred offshore.

The Taranaki based methanol producer Methanex, which employs 240 staff locally and over 3,000 nationally, explained, “Our competition is global, with major methanol production occurring in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Qatar. None of these countries applies a carbon cost to methanol production today; in fact, over 90% of methanol production globally does not attract an emissions cost, and therefore the Industrial Allocation is essential for Methanex to continue operating in New Zealand.”

Methanex also explained that while New Zealand methanol is produced from natural gas, over half of the global supply is produced from coal, with an emissions profile five times greater. They said that because of the Government’s ban on new offshore permits, the lack of natural gas supply had forced them to shut down their Waitara Valley facility. As a result, China had increased its coal-based methanol production to fill the supply gap: “This shutdown therefore runs directly counter to New Zealand’s stated policy of reducing global emissions.”

And that’s the problem Jacinda Ardern created for New Zealand in 2018 when, without any official advice - or even Cabinet approval - she made her Captain’s Call to close down new offshore oil and gas exploration. In doing so, she turned her back on the decades-long strategy of successive governments for New Zealand to be as self-sufficient in energy needs as possible, and, as a result of her recklessness, Kiwis no longer have security of supply.

The reality we face, is that under Labour and the Greens, anything is possible – regardless of how destructive it is to the economic well-being of local communities. Through the stranglehold of climate laws and regulations, at the stroke of a pen the radicals now have control of every industry in New Zealand.

How can any business make long-term investment decisions when they could be crippled by the madness coming out of the Beehive?

The answer is they can’t. There can be no trust that the Ardern Government will act logically or sensibly – given they have failed to do so in the past.

New Zealand increasingly stands alone, hobbled by punitive climate restrictions that have been justified on the basis that such controls are necessary to avoid constraints on trade – yet the European Union trade deal exposed the fundamental fallacy of that rationale.

The reality is that countries are increasingly backing away from the demands of green fanatics for their low carbon fantasy, instead prioritising economic stability and public wellbeing over UN socialism.

Will Jacinda Ardern come to her senses and abandon her dangerous commitment to net-zero before more damage is done to our fragile economy?

And that’s the fundamental problem. The climate crisis is a political crisis – not one rooted in the real world.

It has arisen because successive governments have adopted the radical socialist agenda of the United Nations to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide as a means of regulating their economies.

Justified under the guise of saving the planet, carbon is, in effect, a proxy for State control of all economic activity.

It was Helen Clark’s Labour Government that led New Zealand down this path back in 2002, when they ratified the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and introduced an Emissions Trading Scheme - even though it had been designed for industrial nations, not rural economies where the main ‘emitters’ are cows and sheep.

Ruminants, of course, play a major part in a natural cycle that goes all the way back to the dinosaurs. Grass lands sequester carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and when eaten by ruminants, carbon is released as methane, which breaks down into the carbon dioxide and water the plants need to grow. It’s a cycle of life, yet this is what misguided politicians like our Prime Minister are trying to demonise!

When National won office in 2008, instead of repealing Labour’s socialist climate agenda, they doubled down by signing up to the UN’s Paris Agreement to limit emissions, even as the world’s major emitters were walking away.

Ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic partially delivered on the UN’s Paris objectives, when world economies shut down in early 2020, leading to a massive decline in man-made global greenhouse gas emissions.

However, instead of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels falling – as the UN had led us to believe they would - the US State Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found they had risen dramatically.

The Washington Post of June 4, 2020, carried the story: “Global emissions plunged an unprecedented 17 percent during the coronavirus pandemic… Carbon dioxide levels are the highest they’ve been in human history, and probably are the highest in 3 million years. The last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, global average surface temperatures were significantly warmer than they are today, and sea levels were 50 to 80 feet higher.”

These real-life findings counter the dreadful scaremongering surrounding this issue.

They not only show that human emissions are so insignificant that their impact on the climate is negligible, but they also remind us that the earth has been both hotter and colder than today, irrespective of carbon levels.

The reality is that carbon dioxide is a trace gas that is present in only minute concentrations in the atmosphere - making up around 0.04 percent. Almost all carbon dioxide – 97 percent – is produced through natural processes including being released from oceans, rocks, volcanoes, and, of course, during the respiration of all living things. Only 3 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is generated by human activity and of that, New Zealand’s contribution is an infinitesimal 0.17 percent.

All around the world, governments are turning their backs on radical climate policies that will undermine energy security and economic independence.

Isn’t it time New Zealand did the same?

Last Monday, Statistics New Zealand revealed inflation had hit 7.3 percent – the highest level in 32 years.

As a result of government policies and the Covid pandemic New Zealand’s indebtedness has risen over the last couple of years, from 17% of GDP to approximately 58% of GDP.

The last thing that we can afford now under this debt load is to see our export income significantly reduced which is what will happen as a result of this government’s fixation on agriculture being used to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Accord agreements. Even though article 2b of that Accord stipulates that it should be implemented in a manner that does not threaten food production.

The fundamental problem is that the climate crisis is a political crisis – not one rooted in the real world.

The reality is that carbon dioxide is a trace gas that is present in only minute concentrations in the atmosphere - making up around 0.04 percent. Almost all carbon dioxide – 97 percent – is produced through natural processes including being released from oceans, rocks, volcanoes, and, of course, during the respiration of all living things. Only 3 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is generated by human activity and of that, New Zealand’s contribution is an infinitesimal 0.17 percent.

New Zealand’s total GHG emissions amount to 0.17% of the Global Total and the agricultural sector produces 48% of that total. That amounts to 0.082% of the global total.

The government is stating that agriculture needs to reduce their emissions by 30% so in effect we are going to cripple our country’s economy to save just 0.024% of the world’s total emissions of Greenhouse gases a figure that is less than the amount of gases produced by volcanos (approximately 1%of the global total) around the world every year.

What this government is not telling its supporters is that they are most likely to be the ones that will have to carry the majority of the burden from these policies with the rampant rise in the rate of inflation.

The Labour government has traditionally been the party of choice for the lower socio-economic strata of society and as such any rise in inflation will hit them much harder than the more well off members of society.

Prices of food, rent, interest rates etc. are all severely affected by inflation yet incomes are not rising anywhere as fast which means that those at the bottom of the pile are carrying a far greater share of the burden as a percentage of their income.

Those on or above the median income levels will maybe feel some effects but they will in the most part be able to afford to buy groceries and pay their mortgage or rent even if it hurts. But the Labour supporters at the bottom of the scale are the ones that will start to find that they can’t even afford to buy sufficient food to feed their families let alone pay the exorbitant rents that this government’s policies have caused.

Since Jacinda Ardern’s pledged to strengthen transparency and foster a more open and democratic society, they have made many changes which have significantly altered the fundamental democratic rights and principles upon which our country has been governed.

Many of those decisions have come with great costs for implementation and all of those costs have to be paid for by the taxpayer which in effect also creates an upward effect on inflation making the situation worse for those at the bottom of the scale.

It is plainly obvious from recent poll results that Jacinda Ardern has suffered a loss of public trust and confidence in her leadership. For our ideologically-driven Prime Minister government incompetence is largely to blame.

Who could possibly have imagined when Prime Minister Ardern announced at a World Economic Forum meeting in Switzerland that New Zealand was leading the world in the use of “wellbeing” as a measure of government success that under her watch public services would fail so badly?

Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has authorised a $500 million overhaul of the entire health system in the middle of a pandemic - just to satisfy the ideological demands of her Maori Caucus for co-governance.

By disestablishing community health boards and sacking health leaders, our Prime Minister has left the health system rudderless and in meltdown and meanwhile, the new power-hungry Maori Health Authority, which intends prioritising health care in New Zealand on the basis of race rather than clinical need, is swamping health staff with bureaucratic demands, instead of allowing them to focus on managing the crisis.

The incompetence of the Ardern government is not just related to the health sector. They also promised to build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 years, to enable first-home buyers to enter the housing market and after four years, only 1,366 homes have been built.

Meanwhile, over $1 billion has been spent on emergency housing, and the waiting list for a State house has escalated from 5,000 in 2017 to over 27,000 today.

Then there’s Labour’s wasteful spending – including $53 million on planning, announcing, and then cancelling the “Skypath” cycle bridge across Auckland Harbour. Or, the massive $1.9 billion that was announced with great fanfare to address problems with mental health, that seems to have disappeared almost without trace, even as demand for assistance skyrockets.

And how about the Ministry of Transport’s plan to spend $197 million by 2024 on road safety and education campaigns to support their ‘Road to Zero’ strategy - instead of spending the money on fixing roads!

Rather than removing the red tape and bureaucracy that’s holding the country back, Labour is busy creating more, with an example being their carbon tax which is now fuelling inflation across the whole economy and putting huge pressure on household budgets.

Ever since being first elected, Jacinda Ardern has been big on promises and expensive public relations campaigns, while often failing to deliver results.

Labour has put in place funding for the mainstream media through their $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund and part of the criteria for this funding is to support the government’s propaganda. They are also planning to spend over $370 million merging Radio NZ and TVNZ into one ‘captured’ State-run organisation.

The reality is that the Ardern Government needs to have a friendly media that turns a blind eye to their many of failures.

In the end, it’s not just the lies and broken promises that are causing a loss of trust in Jacinda Ardern’s Government - nor the wasteful spending, the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, the health crisis, the crime crisis, or even the education crisis. These are damaging and justification enough for the government to be defeated.

In education school truancy is at record levels and New Zealand is leading the world in declining standards with more than 40 percent of school leavers now unable to read and write properly. Yet it is a priority for this government to produce a sanitised view of New Zealand history that is acceptable to Maori.

Even graduating students at our tertiary institutions are forced to submit to compulsory Maori cultural propaganda in order to receive their qualifications.

The greatest act of shame that this Labour Government must be held accountable for is the way in which they have divided our nation by race.

Jacinda Ardern prior to the 2020 election deliberately failed to inform the public that if elected, she would be prioritising co-governance and tribal rule as recommended in the He Pua Pua report.

With the total election majority giving Labour the power to govern alone, Jacinda Ardern’s government has been making radical changes that have undermined our economy and attacked our democracy.

Clearly what matters to Prime Minister Ardern is not defending our democracy and standing up for the Rule of Law, it’s cosying up to the iwi elite, introducing tribal rule through co-governance, and rebranding all of our government departments with unpronounceable names “gifted” by Maori.

With the failure of the fourth estate to question government decisions the essential character of New Zealand is being transformed from a country that was doing well by world standards, to a deeply divided society that is in decline.

For the sake of New Zealand’s future Jacinda Ardern and her government need to go.

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