Why didn’t these MPs boast they were socialists before the election?

Thursday night’s Budget Debate took a weird turn. Multiple Labour MPs (and one Green MP) took off their centre-left masks and professed allegiance to socialism.

The following quotes are taken direct from Parliament’s “Hansard” transcript:

• Kieran McAnulty: “Yes, I am a socialist and I’m proud of it. Yeah—there you go. [Applause] Thank you very much. Bring it on, and I’m very proud to say to the good people of the Wairarapa that they elected a proud socialist as their MP.”
• Angie Warren-Clark: “Oh, what a pleasure it is to speak after my colleague, my comrade, Kieran McAnulty.”
• Duncan Webb: “Well, there’s so many of us great socialists on this side of the House.”
• Deborah Russell: “I stand here as a very proud member of the great socialist democratic Labour Party.”
• Anna Lorck: “I’m a socialist!”
• Ricardo Menendez-March: “The Green Party will continue working hard to offer our support to Labour to enact genuine bold socialist policy.”

If these MPs are such proud socialists, why didn’t they tell New Zealanders during the election campaign?

Could it be that they knew taxpayers would object to a political system that holds contempt for individual rights of property and liberty?

It’s easy to write these things off as a joke, but socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery across the world. The Prime Minister should ask these MPs to publicly retract their outbursts. At the very least, they should meet with New Zealanders who escaped socialist regimes in China, Venezuela, Cambodia, and the Soviet Union.

Until then, they deserve our mirth. We’ve pulled together clips from Parliament TV that capture the ideological fever surrounding Red Robbo’s benefit-boosting budget:

Click here to watch the video.

How Grant Robertson’s Budget pulls New Zealand to the Left

A Government Budget can either grow the economic pie, or divide it.

Grant Robertson’s Budget unveiled last week was very much a dividing-the-pie budget. Instead of improving incentives for New Zealanders to be productive, he did the opposite, announcing bigger rewards for anyone who goes on the benefit.

Our Executive Director Jordan Williams and consulting economist Joe Ascroft both attended the Budget lock up. I sat down with them immediately afterwards for an in-depth discussion of the economics and politics of Budget 2021. Click here to listen.

I also joined The Panel on Radio New Zealand to explain why the Taxpayers’ Union calls Budget 2021 a “major shift in the economic dial to the Left’. Click here to listen.

Some Budget spending that escaped media attention

Budget 2021 divvies out $5 million for public servants and iwi to explain to New Zealanders what Matariki is:

Next up, the Budget spends $44 million on getting bureaucrats to teach businesses how to use computers:

Finally, $5.5 million is being given to Beehive offices to help them deal with the findings of a review of “harmful behaviour” in the workplace.

(Translation: $5.5 million more for extra political advisors spin doctors, using the Francis Review as cover.)

Grant Robertson says his new levy isn’t a tax

The headline says it all.

The Government’s proposed unemployment insurance scheme (which will pay people who lose their jobs 80 percent of their salaries) will be funded by all workers via a levy – similar to ACC.

We say that if it looks like a tax and quacks like a tax, it’s a tax.

Grant Robertson is claiming it isn’t a tax because he doesn’t want to look like he’s breaking his pre-election “no new taxes” promise. But we all know he’s already broken this promise with his new taxes on landlords. He can stop playing games now.

An inside view of Nanaia Mahuta’s office

We received a fascinating tip-off earlier this year from a very reliable source that Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta had requested officials change the way they format their briefing papers. Specifically, she asked officials to use fewer words and more pictures in her Ministerial briefings!

As is our practice, we used an Official Information Act request to confirm it was really true.

First, they extended the four week deadline to six “due to the necessity for consultation”. Then, they provided only a partial response: one of the three relevant pieces of correspondence was withheld on the basis of “confidentiality of advice” and “to protect the free and frank expression of opinions by departments”.

So we weren’t able to verify the tip-off – but the fact they won’t answer the question says it all.

The Ministry did inform us of this change the Minister requested to the way her letters are written:

Click here to view a larger image.

Focusing on the things that matter!

Maybe we should do a fundraiser for a picture book atlas to present to the Minister.

MSD isn’t enforcing parental responsibility rules for beneficiaries

Parents who are on the benefit are required to meet certain obligations to keep getting their payments, including having their children in school or early education, and enrolled with a doctor.

The obligations were put in place in 2013, but it turns out the Ministry of Social Development can’t be bothered enforcing them. In fact, they never have! To date, no parents have had benefits docked for failing to meet these basic obligations.

The Ministry’s excuse: enforcing the rules would involve “a burdensome administrative process”.

We say that’s not good enough. Sure, there should be some room for flexibility, but to ignore legal obligations carte blanche makes them meaningless. The rules were put in place by an elected Government. It’s the job of the Ministry to put in place systems that allow those rules to be enforced efficiently.

We’ll be watching to see whether the Minister (Carmel Sepuloni) gets her officials to crack down, or scraps these sensible rules.

Secrecy continues at Christchurch City Council as crucial report withheld from ratepayers

Christchurch City Council last year spent $95,000 on a review of Council spending. It turns out the review found millions in Council waste – but the Council refuses to release the report publicly!

This is yet another appalling display of secrecy from Christchurch City Council. Our fight back in 2018 to get the Council to release the cost of a $1.3 million touch screen led us all the way to the steps of the High Court before the information was grudgingly released. The saga led to a damning judgment from the Ombudsman. Now, it appears the Council’s new Chief Executive is continuing the City Council’s culture of secrecy.

The Council argues that releasing the report would raise privacy concerns. Fine then: release it in redacted form, with identifying details of individuals blanked out. The Council might fear the political consequences of releasing a critical report, but that’s not a legitimate reason to withhold public information.

The Debt Clock still running hot 

We’ve updated the Official New Zealand Debt Clock at www.DebtClock.nz with the latest figures from Budget 2021. Turn on the news and you’d think everything is fine, but the numbers don’t lie.

Grant Robertson’s borrowing now totals almost $64,000 for every Kiwi household. All of this will have to be paid off, with interest, by taxpayers in the decades to come. And if interest rates return to the long run average, God help us.

Enjoy the rest of your week,

Louis Houlbrooke Campaigns Manager New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union

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Traditionally, socialism has meant state ownership of the means of production (land and capital assets), but it can mean different things to different people. Centralised government control with extensive bureaucracy are standard features.  What matters more is how honest was Labour with voters (particularly in regard to its now revealed racial policies) and how much more are taxes going to increase. How much of the tax take will be spent on things the people need — good roads, railways, schools, hospitals, satisfactory social housing — rather than going to international billionaires, wealthy law firms, spin doctors and highly paid bureaucrats? —Eds

by Thomasina Wolfe

Apartheid in Aoteoroa

The Dominion Post claims it is Aotearoa’s last bastion of real news. It reports only facts. It is rigorously fair and independent. How do these claims stack up?

Joel Maxwell, a senior member of the Dominion Post team (as opposed to “Fake News”), says in a piece: “the only people to literally experience apartheid in Aotearoa were Māori.” Mr Maxwell asserts this claim as a proven fact — NZ is the land of apartheid. He does not refer to any law to prove his assertion.

He tells us his meticulous research further proves that “through the 1970s, Māori and Pasifika players were allowed to travel as ‘honorary whites’, a brilliant technical loophole that managed to simultaneously defile everybody’s intelligence and moral decency”. When I made inquiry of Internal Affairs, who issue passports, they said they could not provide me with copies of any “Honorary White” passports.

Mr Maxwell then gives us the benefit of his deep Maori philosophical and political insights into the fount of racism in NZ. “You see, the superfood of institutional racism is caution. Equity always takes second place to endless protocol and procedure – weaponised moderation, conversations. But I’m not woke, I’m Māori.”

Dominion Post Wokes their own Redneck

The Dominion Post declares “Like you, we believe in the right of every New Zealander to have a say on the issues that affect them”. What does it do?

Columnist dubbed thinking man’s redneck bows out after 17 years is how it greeted the resignation of its journalist Martin van Beynen, an investigative reporter and columnist. Van Beynen’s reporting was known for its balance, the writer’s depth of knowledge and never using abusive language. Unlike the current editor, Anna Fifield, who slaughters a person’s lifetime reputation by labelling him a redneck.

He does describe what the Dominion Post is like behind closed doors. “I don’t like wokeness or virtue signalling or cancelling people for some trivial perceived infringement of current sensibilities… I don’t like tailoring my views to suit a new zeitgeist. I don’t like the implication that everything done to improve people’s lives prior to the latest orthodoxy has been a disastrous failure and that some new system will bring in a utopia.”  

So, the Dominion Post/Stuff has brought in the new age of enlightenment. Mr van Beynen was clearly wrong. The new utopia has arrived — it is not just on its way. Aotearoa, having the Capital’s only daily paper publishing the new utopian facts such as apartheid New Zealand, outing any critics of the New Age as bloody rednecks, and the superfood of racism being caution, the  brilliant future of Aotearoa is reassured.

by Selwyn Barron

This is a boneyard near Paris, France with hundreds of electric powered cars. Mind you, these are only cars used by the City of Paris and not personal vehicles. All of these have the same issue — the battery storage cells have given out and need to be replaced. Why not just replace them you ask? Well two reasons: First, the battery storage cells cost almost double what the vehicle cost new, and second, no landfill or disposals will allow the batteries to be disposed of there. So these green fairy tale electric cars are all sitting in vacant lots while their batteries drain toxins into the ground.

And on the same subject in the same country–

https://www.iceagenow.info/why-this-frenchman-regrets-buying-an-electric-car/

Our politics is becoming increasingly and uncomfortably race-based. The Government is to blame. So many of their policies are explicitly race-based. It’s becoming impossible to debate policies without talking about race. ACT exist to have honest conversations about difficult issues like these. We will never apologise for asking questions on your behalf and we will work to unite New Zealanders behind good ideas.

The controversial chairman of the National Trust Tim Parker has resigned amid a growing revolt among members over his ‘woke’ policies. His decision to quit was announced just 24 hours after a highly critical motion at this year’s AGM said the membership had no confidence in his leadership and demanded his resignation.

Members, ministers and MPs had grown increasingly frustrated with Mr Parker’s chairmanship, which critics said he used to take the 126-year-old charity in a ‘politically correct’ direction. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9618429/National-Trust-chairman-QUITS-amid-revolt-woke-policies.html

by Christopher Ruthe

“Eating mushrooms may reduce the risk of cognitive decline,” is the headline in leading US science journal Science News, 26.5.2021. Research by the Departments of Psychological Medicine and Biochemistry at the School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS) has found that seniors who consume more than two standard portions of mushrooms weekly have 50 per cent less of having mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

And it is any variety of mushrooms — button, flats, dried and canned. How much should you eat? A portion? is 3/4 of a cup of cooked mushrooms (approx 150 grams). So mushrooms on toast at least twice a week seems the to way to go. Also, add them to your ragout (stew). 

“This correlation is surprising and encouraging. It seems that a commonly available single ingredient could have a dramatic effect on cognitive decline,” said Professor Lei Feng, the lead author of the research. And well researched it was- a six-year study. The reason for the reduced prevalence of MCI in mushroom eaters was ascribed to a specific compound — ergothioneine — found in almost all varieties. Dr Irwin Cheah, Senior Research Fellow said “Ergothioneine is a unique antioxidant and anti-inflammatory which can be obtained from dietary sources, one of the main ones being mushrooms.”

For those who love the science read on. Other compounds contained within mushrooms may also be advantageous for decreasing the risk of cognitive decline. Certain hericenones, erinacines, scabronines and dictyophorines may promote the synthesis of nerve growth factors. Bioactive compounds in mushrooms may also protect the brain from neurodegeneration by inhibiting production of beta amyloid and phosphorylated tau, and acetylcholinesterase.

Forgetting where you left the keys? Missing the odd appointment? The remedy: get stuck into those mushrooms. Remember they are in the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

by Selwyn Barron

Just today, 25 May 2021, at a supermarket I presented three boxes of eight bottles of soft drink. A sample bottle was scanned and then I asked the teenager checkout person how many bottles were there in three boxes of eight bottles. “Eight- sixteen—-” then had a discussion with two teenage colleagues — each blank and embarrassed. Momentarily I was shocked — then I was sad — then I was mad!  I assured them it was not their fault and that they had been sadly let down by New Zealand’s education system. What a damning indictment of the Ministry of Education.  What an example of child neglect!

The KCDC has included the below statement in this week’s newsletter. Remember that the people who get these messages are normally frontline staff, poorly paid compared to the bosses, and in our experience nearly all wonderful people.

While politicians can expect satire, sarcasm and acerbic comments — it goes with the territory and is often deserved — the staff who have to read messages are ordinary diligent workers and deserve respect.

The things we say and do to each other online have real-world impacts, and whether intended or not, those impacts shape the environments we live, work, study and play in.   Although we can’t control how others behave online, we can all take steps to improve our own experiences and behaviour, and how we respond in different situations.

With that in mind, we have updated our guidelines for our Council Facebook page to better support an environment where everyone can feel safe, valued and respected. Our work here at Council is a constant balancing act and while we accept that there will be times when you might feel like we’ve got it wrong,  no one should have to accept personal attacks or harassment as part of their job, and neither should those participating on our Council Facebook page.

It’s not only NZ either — here is a Daily Mail article on John Lennon’s son ripping into cancel culture.