By Amy Brooke
No wonder apartments in Auckland are now lying empty as New Zealanders flee the country. And how sad that businesses are saying they can receive 600, 700, or up to a 1000 applications for one job that they advertise. People with top university degrees such as Ph.Ds in Chemistry and associated disciplines who have been replaced by AI – or because of the failure of so many businesses – are also desperately looking for jobs. In the first week of January this year, national retail businesses announced the closure of a combined 61 stores. Other businesses have recently been reported as closing.
Major businesses in Nelson alone have either closed, or are planning to do so.
Kitchen Things has permanently closed. Many hundreds of jobs have been lost with the closure of Carter Holt Harvey, the Eves Valley Sawmill, the Sea Lord Coated Fish factory, Griffins Snacks and New Zealand King Salmon claiming they need to relocate.
This is obviously a desperately worrying time for so many with mortgages to pay and families to support. So what is actually inexcusable, with so many well-qualified individuals desperately applying for jobs, is the simple rudeness of so many in management who don’t even bother to reply. Thanking applicants and advising that the job has now been filled should be standard practice. I can think of one school leaver who has so far applied for 47 jobs She has been lucky enough to get three thank you, but no, replies. So many hear back nothing at all – utterly dispiriting. Volunteer organisations are sadly reporting that they have to turn away people who just want to help in order to have something to occupy their days because they, too, have so many applicants willing to work just for nothing – for the sake of their self-respect.
But New Zealand First and Shane Jones have just bestowed another $10 million bribe on a group of individuals of part-Maori only descent, as politicians pay their ritual obeisance to the Ratana group…with Winston Peters claiming it as Koha (a gift ) and Jones calling it government money. No, Shane. It is not Government money. Government has no money except what it filches from taxpayers…and why did you give Waikato $30 million dollars? With the Maori economy reportedly worth $126 billion, New Zealanders as a whole have a right to ask why the ever-available slush fund our successive governments use to divert money from much-needed areas such as hospitals, health, mental health – and access to important medical treatments that Pharmac apparently can’t make available in this country – but are routinely available overseas. The everlasting squandering of taxpayers‘money on Maori-only interests is apparently unstoppable. Yet we have people now thrown out of jobs in a failing economy while Christopher Luxon boasts that New Zealand is on the path to economic recovery.
Who believes him… and what a disgraceful performance the Luxon-led coalition has turned on. Undoubtedly, they have inherited the shocking mismanagement of the economy over which Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson presided, with Finance Minister Robertson regarded as having totally mismanaged his portfolio, hiking up public spending by 67% and increasing government spending by 161%. He said his only regret from his time in office was that he didn’t take on more debt.Yet he is regarded today as having an addiction to wasteful, unchecked, reckless inflationary spending with nothing to show for it except record interest payments and a 30 year high inflation level. And then we had Jacinda Ardern’s additional contribution to lessening productivity by the introduction of the totally unnecessary Matariki Day – of no genuine significance whatsoever to today’s part-Maori – as many pointed out – but estimated to cost the country up to $448 million.
There is no doubt that the total mess the coalition inherited from Ardern’s and Chris Hipkins Labour party left this disastrous inheritance for the National- led coalition to tackle. However, many find it quite shocking that so poorly has the coalition performed under the self-satisfied Christopher Luxon – leading a National Party without enough common sense or courage to replace him as leader – that Labour could well take up office again, with devastating consequences for the country when allied to the financially illiterate green Party, and the vindictive, squabbling Maori Party.
Under National, public debt continues to rise because our governments cannot live within their means. Nor can our local councils. Yet nationwide, both councillors and Mayors have voted themselves healthy pay rises. Moreover, both taxpayers and ratepayers are forced to give more and more of their hard-won earnings to support bloated hierarchies – for example, as with prime ministers who have served more than two terms – like the multimillionaire, John Key, to whom taxpayers are forced to contribute yearly both in cash, and in access to special perks.
But why?
Over the years, New Zealand has fallen so far behind in supporting vital institutions like health and education – genuine academic education, not the farce into which the Ministry of Education has turned it – to the extent that we have fallen far behind other Western nations -for example in what we supply for cancer-related drugs available elsewhere – even in Australia. The money has gone in a never-ending cascade to iwi – as with the totally exorbitant $420 million payment recently granted to the Top of the South tribal groups – as well as ownership of land owned by all New Zealanders and administered by DOC – money again taken from the pockets of hard-pressed taxpayers.
And now we have the 10 million bribe given to the Ratana. But the question needs to be asked – what right do Shane Jones and Winston Peters have to think that they can take yet another $10 million from the public to bestow upon a local group of Maori who simply do not need the money – because buying of votes has become paramount? Ironically, in World War 2, the Ratana population were actually disloyal to the country. They looked forward to the Japanese invasion of New Zealand. They wore badges depicting the rising sun and the government was sufficiently perturbed to send representatives up the East Coast to confiscate their guns. Yet annually, all our governments touch their forelocks to this religious group.
We all know that New Zealand is in a thoroughly bad way. All legislation now prioritises Maori interests over those of the country as a whole, as with the now envisaged Planning Bill and the National Environment bills which will decide who has influence over land use, housing and infrastructure – with so-called Maori having prior say. Yet of course we no longer have any real Maori -simply individuals with varying traces of Maori genetic inheritance – and it is the bureaucrats behind the government who are constantly pushing for iwi influence to take precedence over all else.
Luxon and the coalition have caved in on co-governance areas, and apparently we were simply lied to when the coalition promised to restore the English names to all our government departments into institutions – something that, to his credit, Simeon Brown did immediately, getting rid of Waka Kotahi and restoring its proper name – the New Zealand Transport Association, which NZTA executives have been ignoring ever since – trailing the inauthentic te Reo name after the English one, and now putting up Maori language signs over the countryside – a typical example of cultural bullying that this country is now undergoing.
The majority of the country has had enough of being ignored. Yet things will not change things until individuals themselves stop leaving it to others, and contact their local MPs, emailing them and their parliament representatives and ringing parliament. It is a very simple and effective procedure to call parliament – its number is 04 817 9999 and ask to be put through to the office of the party leader or a particular MP to whom you need to pass on your views. They all want your votes…
A country is not lost by the determined activism of a vocal and aggressive minority – as we now have with the small number of obsessive Maori radicals – who are by no means supported it by the majority of part-Maori New Zealanders. A country is lost, as we are losing ours, by the timidity, the laziness or the cowardice of so many who could, but simply do, not help…who do nothing…
New Zealand First has been rising in the polls -particularly with people turning away from the Luxon-led National party. But what they did at Ratana was inexcusable and disgraceful. They need to be told this. Some may well ask: If Jones feels so strongly about giving gifts, why does he not pay for them out of his own pocket?
Genuine reform will only occur in this country when New Zealanders can hold our government to account – but it will not happen unless we get a tipping point of New Zealanders waking up to the possibilities of achieving what the clever Swiss contrived for themselves, so that the people themselves control the government – not vice versa. See www.100days.co.nz – and help support us.
Please note again, as it is very important.
It is so very easy to ring Parliament – 04 817 9999 – and ask to be forwarded to your selected MP’s office to make your thinking heard. What possible excuse can individuals have for not doing so?
