END GAME

Synopsis:

Where are we going under this right wing Coalition government? What does it look like? What do they ultimately want?

Beliefs

Before we get there, I want to quickly re-clarify some core beliefs

I started writing after I took a closer look at the government.

They were already in power.

After I examined their background, narratives, and policies, what drove me to write was: “Information and transparency will help my fellow Kiwis and our country”

• We could be better prepared to defend against misinformation and lies – i.e. avoid what happened in Brexit and Australia’s Voice Referendum.
• Knowledge would allow us to make more thoughtful choices and rally for a stronger direction together.
• Knowledge is power, so the more folks are educated and understand the nuances, the more we can anticipate and work together in solidarity.

To me, freedom of selection is essential for us all – but freedom is only real if decisions, choices, and trade-offs are upheld with honesty, transparent implications, and holds integrity and the well-being of this nation and all its people, at its core.

That is my belief.

So, What’s The End Game?

Quite simply, what is their goal? What do they want to achieve? What might it look like?

The answer in its most basic form is quite simple —

What they want is control which they can personally benefit from.

That’s it, really!

And control means they can do what they want, irrespective of impacts, under a delivered pretext

Control for them is driven by self interest – and not the interests of the collective or long term welfare.

i.e. It’s not driven by the typical values, metrics, measurements, goals and standards one might expect of traditional good governance and public service.

If this hypothesis stands, it stands to follow, they are only interested in furthering benefits to those who provide them benefits e.g. donors or people, society or organisations that promise a lucrative path ahead.

• As one example of donor relationships- we have seen that the wealthiest individuals in New Zealand and nearly all property developers only donated to National, ACT & NZ First.

• One of these donors is Winton Property Development, who donated to National and saw Chris Bishop fight for them against our government when he was in opposition, and once in government grant them fast-track approval to build on land, that is classified as a “flood plain” in South Auckland – likely without having to consult with local authorities.

• As another examples – Fisheries have donated bigly to New Zealand First for years. Last year, in November, Greenpeace urged National not to give the fisheries portfolio to New Zealand First given the financial links. Of course Luxon did anyway.

• And in his role as Fisheries Minister, Shane Jones immediately pushed blanket 25 year consents for every fish farm in NZ – allowing them to escape all environmental oversight and any scrutiny, backtracked on NZ’s commitment to deep sea trawling limits and ocean protection, and tried to stop the rollout of cameras on commercial fishing boats because one of his largest fisheries donors thought they added ‘red tape’ and costs to their operations.

To successfully enact their goals, it is fundamentally necessary for them to keep large swathes of people satisfied, satiated and otherwise distracted enough, so they can deliver on their real agenda.

This means 3 themes are necessarily emergent:

1. Controlling the narrative is foundational. They must control the narrative e.g. presenting harmful policies as “good for the country” e.g. smoke free repeal where the government repeated tobacco industry talking points . It also involves ‘flooding the zone with shit’ – i.e. disorienting the population with an onslaught of misinformation and PR announcements.
2. Taking down opponents is criticial – Expertise and transparency is a threat under this set up – therefore we see doctors and nurses who speak up about Health NZ get labelled “sabotage” and “resistance”. We see the New Zealand judiciary called “activist judges” and “elites” for doing their job, and receive threats from the sitting NZ government to shut them down. We also see a sitting govenrnment attack media such as TVNZ, and individual journalists such as Mihingarangi Forbes and Jenny May Clarkson.
3. Grow a home base of supporters who favour party over country, and grow a culture of emotional reactivity in NZ based on misinformation and manipulation. This playbook is leaned on more by those that flank the National Party i.e. New Zealand First and ACT. But National partake as well e.g. with their proven lies about Health NZ, education, blaming Labour for their austerity budget choices. If you want to know what that end result looks like in practice, look to the empire of Rupert Murdoch and those who consume his news.

• A former socialist, Murdoch has made billions from cultivating rage and influencing society, drawing immense power to himself and his empire.
• His strategy involves harnessing disinformation / misinformation to cultivate grievances and then target those who are often unrelated to the root causes e.g. immigrants or left wing governments The same strategy was applied during Brexit.

This article could go for a long time as each of these points can be extrapolated further and further.

I’ll try to avoid that.

But the above “goal” may show you why a government could be fundamentally and ENTIRELY uninterested in evidence, facts, inputs, and research backed expertise – in almost every singular policy it touches. (Examples are in the footnotes.)

The above hypothesis also demonstrates why academics, health experts, doctors, nurses, teachers, justices, lawyers, professional journalists and independent newsrooms are all, metaphofically, cannon fodder

i.e. any risks to them controlling the narrative must be diminished and if necessary removed – because they speak what the government does not want to hear, and it does not want the general population to believe.

Before I wrap up, please bear with me here because I need to do a little fine print stuff.

As you already know, the New Zealand government has three branches of government to ensure the appropriate separation of powers. These are called “checks and balances” to make sure power is not consolidated and therefore abused by one body.

The three branches are:

1. The Executive: The Ministers and their government departments. They run things like finance, bringing proposed laws to parliament that must be approved by the Legislature, and choosing and enacting policies.
2. The Legislature: Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Governor-General. The role of the Legislature is to make laws (legislation), and to scrutinise the Executive.
3. The judiciary: The judiciary are judges and the courts. Judges interpret the law in cases that come before the courts by hearing and deciding cases, and they can review decisions of government.

What we’ve seen with this government’s continued attacks on e.g the Waitangi Tribunal, judges etc. are unconstitutional, and speaks to a playbook we’ve seen used in the USA i.e. undermine or stack the judiciary to remove the separation of powers and consolidate powers to the politicians in power.

And by instigating a culture of misinformation, PR, and personal attacks – with ancillary support from allied organisations e.g. Taxpayers Union – they introduce a culture of personal intimidation that influences the Legislature i.e everyone is fair game in this environment – and misinforming the electorate makes them useful to right wing causes to attack MPs or journalists or schools etc. who do not abide by their wishes.

What Does The End Game Look Like In Practice?

In practice it looks like the agenda of whoever and whatever the Executive are working for.

In our system of government, a good way of reviewing it is to follow the money i.e. donor interests, but also dark money backers, sponsorships, related networks of ideology.

This has been explored in other articles on the Tui publication such as Corruption First Strikes Again, Nicola Willis’s Very Unserious Bungling of the Kiwirail Interislander Cancellation, Knives Out fo Kainga Ora, and Pharmac Director, Climate Change Commissioner, Health NZ Directors – The latest to quit this month

But the TLDR version is – under this government, the theme of donors includes oil and gas, tobacco, property development, fisheries, agriculture, road contractors, early childhood education, and far right wing conservative ideologies.

And we’ve seen their policies invariably support those sectors – at the expense of counter parties.

In practice the ideology of the money behind it is manifested in an:

• Anti-environment agenda – i.e. rolling back climate protections that accepts responsibility and takes action on climate change and preserving natural reserves and wildlife. Ignoring investment in public transport, bicycle networks and natural reserves and conservation.
• Anti-transgender agenda – e.g. implement a Human Rights Commissioner and Race Relations Commissioner with proven anti-transgender links
• Privatise and corporatise. As Luxon has already said, nothing is off limits for privatisation under his government – health, roads, schools, hospitals, water.
• Centralise power in the hands of a few elites in power e.g. the fast-track bill
• Appointing ‘cronies’ who share a loyalty to their party, irrespective of qualification or suitability e.g. Stephen Rainbow
• Publicly attacking opponents and undermining experts
• Remove constraints on corporations and wealthy interests under the guise of “reducing red and green tape”.

In an excellent Guardian article from June, the modus operandi of the right network related to our government, was listed as:

A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?

Anything ring a bell, indeed.

“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”

– Henry A. Wallace, former Vice President of the United States

The end game for the far right agenda is ultimately and wholly unconcerned with what happens to our hospitals, our doctors and nurses, and top talent.

It’s unconcerned with climate change, emissions and ‘woke’ things like animals, seas and forests.

It’s unconcerned about the true long term cost of any of its decisions that don’t affect themself as individuals…

It is predicated on control of power by the true elites – and not the co-opted word the right use to describe those with information and expertise.

So long as they can find new people or groups to blame, accuse and abuse, the grift can go on for a long time….

This is why the best template for what it will look like is a replica of the UK Tory Britain and the US Republican America: increasing transfer of wealth to the wealthy, reduced regulations and costs to businesses, less environmental care and increase in environmental destruction, continued dismantling of core health infrastructure and removal of top talent, continued appointment of ‘cronies’ irrespective of qualification, more hardship in the population, and increasing efforts by the wealthy and powerful to exert control.

While we are less mature on the continuum towards right wing characterisistc of the US / UK, it doesn’t mean we are not moving there – and as quickly as they can do it.

New Zealand’s unique Te Tiriti / Treaty of Waitangi is also a wrinkle they need ironed out.

PS

Some features of the current coalition include inducing a wider and deeper recession through an unforced austerity budget, a four year high unemployment rate and rising, more debt (not to save lives or build infrastructure), “a sustained productivity slowdown”, the intentional dismantling of our public health system as the government privatises health by stealth, torpedoing our climate progress and plummeting NZ’s international environmental ratings in a short 12 months – leading to NZ potentially kicked out of international climate coalitions and breaching trade deals, ignoring abuse in care as it happens and policies that continue to harm our most vulnerable – from those who rely on food banks, to the disabled, to domestic violence victims, to tamariki to high needs children

This is an excerpt of End Game – published on Mountain Tui’s Substack