HIPKINS HOPING ARDERN'S FOR THE WHO, UN - OR ANYWHERE

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Woop-de-doo!!! Perhaps it's too soon to crack open the Bolly, but it looks like Jacinda Ardern is on her way out. In her latest op ed Dr Muriel Newman (NZPCR) gives all the right reasons for that wishful thinking (could there be a wrong reason? Any reason would do).  

"Is Chris Hipkins anticipating that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is planning to step down – and perhaps move onto higher office at the United Nations?" asks Dr Newman.

Well she's not likely to settle down to married bliss with the convenient Mr Whatshisname and lots of siblings for little Neve. No. She'll go wherever her Communist masters say. 

"In politics, things are often not what they seem. That’s why an opinion piece published in the Herald last week by the Minister for the Public Service Chris Hipkins, defending the expansion of the public service, raises some interesting questions.

Since it is unusual for Cabinet Ministers to publish newspaper articles at this stage in an election cycle, one has to wonder whether Labour’s internal polling shows opposition criticism is too damaging to be left unanswered – or whether this is the start of a positioning campaign ahead of a leadership pitch?

Is Chris Hipkins anticipating that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is planning to step down – and perhaps move onto higher office at the United Nations? If so, is he now signalling he’s a serious challenger for the top job?

Late last year the Labour Party streamlined the way they elect their leader by removing the right for the unions and party members to have a say, Now, if two-thirds of Caucus agree, the decision is theirs alone.

Labour’s rule change was most likely influenced by the experience of the previous National Government, which had been blindsided by the surprise resignation of Prime Minister John Key midway through his third term. He moved on while the party still had plenty of popular support and in time for the new leadership team to settle in  before the next election.

While Jacinda Ardern is only midway through her second term, the mood of the nation has turned against her. As the pandemic death toll ...

Dr Newman presumably means the toll of deaths listed as caused by Covid, rather than with Covid  

... approaches 1,000, with more than a million Kiwis infected, not only can she no longer claim Covid success, but by breaking her promise not to impose vaccine mandates, and blocking New Zealanders from returning home, has undermined trust.

Furthermore, the cost-of-living crisis – exacerbated by Labour’s reckless spending – is hitting families, with Government incompetence and waste coming under scrutiny. With inflation on the run, these issues will not go away quickly, and not without pain to homeowners – especially those with high debt.

The Prime Minister is having to deal with a belligerent Maori caucus continuing to push their extremist tribal rule agenda, despite mounting public opposition, undermining support for the Party.

For Ardern, the bottom line is that she is likely to be defeated at the next election. The alternative would be to take a leaf out of the John Key playbook and leave before suffering the humiliation of being tossed out.

So, who would succeed Ardern? Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson stand out as the leading contenders.

Deputy PM Robertson has attempted to become Party leader a number of times in the past. He lost out to David Cunliffe in 2013, and to Andrew Little in 2014.

After the loss to Little, Grant Robertson is reported as saying,“I am taking the idea of me running off the table. I am not going to do it.”

Hipkins holds the Covid, Education, and Public Service Cabinet portfolios and Leader of the House. He won Remutaka with over 17,000 more votes than his nearest rival.

Minister Hipkins is now also taking a lead role in defending the Government’s record, including a massive expansion of the Public Service which has seen the number of full-time employees grow by almost 30 percent in just over four years: “The number of permanent employees has grown between 2017 and 2021 from 47,252 in 2017 to 61,100 in 2021.”

He claims the growth of the bureaucracy by 14,000 additional employees at a cost of over $2 billion a year is “a positive story, one of innovation, flexibility and better services.”

Claiming innovation within the Public Service is surely a joke. Does Hipkins not realise that bigger bureaucracies destroy wealth and stifle innovation?

The reality is that expanding the size and scope of government is what socialist politicians do. ‘The State knows best’. They ignore the debilitating effect their bureaucratic red tape has on private sector wealth creators. Not only do governments consume wealth – the total cost of just paying Government workers has ballooned 30 percent under Labour from $22 billion in 2017 to almost $30 billion a year in 2021 – but much of their spending provides little public benefit.

 

Just look at the dismal failure of Labour’s ‘flagship’ KiwiBuild policy. Or the $1.9 billion “invested” in mental health with no appreciable benefits. Or the Ministry of Transport’s spending of $145 million on consultants and only $200 million on construction!

Or what about $500 million on restructuring costs to create the Maori Health Authority and abolish the District Health Boards, which medical professionals are now warning is going to create deadly chaos and ultimately cost many New Zealanders their lives.

National’s criticism of Labour’s wasteful spending is resonating in the community.

Everyone votes on what's in their pocket.  

So too is ACT’s alternative budget, which suggests abolishing the woke “Demographic Ministries” – the Ministry for Maori Development, the Office for Crown-Maori Relations, the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, and the Ministry for Women.   

These government agencies are not “colourblind” and working for the good of all New Zealanders but instead are politically correct taxpayer-funded lobby groups pushing an identity politics agenda to advance the rights of one group of New Zealanders above all others.

The Ministry for Women, which had 39 full-time staff and over $7 million in funding, works across government and non-government agencies pressuring organisations to adopt pro-women policy positions.

The ideological call for “diversity” is now undermining the traditional objective of hiring ‘the best person for the job’, which has long been the foundation of success.  

Once the Ministry achieved their target of 50 percent of women on state sector boards and committees, they began collaborating with other Demographic agencies, including the Ministry for Ethnic Communities – which had 39 staff and an annual budget of $13 million – to push for greater ethnic representation in positions of influence.

The other Demographic agencies include the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, which has clearly  become a priority for Labour, growing from 45 staff and a $10 million budget in 2017, to 75 staff and $118 million in funding by 2020. The Ministry for Maori Development (Te Puni Kokiri), which had 350 staff and $77 million budget to deliver a radical race-based agenda, which includes He Puapua and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And the Office of Maori-Crown Relations (Te Arawhiti), which, with 233 staff and a budget of $12 million, is responsible for embedding the Treaty partnership concept across the whole of Government “to achieve true cultural change” by ‘re-training’ “50,000 people in the core public service, and a further 350,000-plus in the wider state sector.”

Is this really the sort of New Zealand we want, where race and ethnicity become more important than talent? Don’t New Zealanders across the country who are now victims of agencies where this progressive agenda has taken hold want good services delivered by the best and most effective people for the job, rather than woke employees hired to make bosses feel more “inclusive”?

In their alternative budget, ACT also identified the Human Rights Commission with its staff of 42 and budget of $14 million for the axe, claiming they have become a hard-left organisation masquerading as a government department. Established in 1977 to defend human rights – including our right to free speech – the Commission has now become a radical advocate for hate speech and divisive minority causes, including the creation of a Treaty of Waitangi constitution, promoting the Treaty partnership fiction, and enacting the UN Indigenous Rights Declaration, that are now fracturing society and harming our Kiwi way of life." https://www.nzcpr.com/time-for-change/ (edited).

"In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph."