Brian and Hannah Tamaki and their supporters decided to disrupt the country in a major protest organised yesterday. He must have been disappointed with the result. Because although a few hardy protestors managed to disrupt Auckland by walking onto a motorway and by some others driving slowly. The thinking behind it is hard to fathom. There is nothing more likely to get you offside with Aucklanders than adding to congestion.
And looks like the rationale is to have yet another run at the elections next year. And a mega merger of idiot parties is in the drawing board. From the Herald:
Tamaki told Radio New Zealand he will soon make an announcement regarding three minor parties forming a coalition.
Tamaki said three minor parties have made the commitment to operate under a new umbrella.
“I’m in talks with others. So it looks like there’s going to be a new party on the block.
“We want to bring reform to this political establishment. It needs changing. We want to get it out of the hands of parties, and into the hands of people.”
Tamaki said he has no interest in personally running for Parliament, preferring to act in an advisory role to the new party.
The reason for the protest was to demand the Government resigns. Comparisons were drawn with what is happening in Sri Lanka. There are differences however. One nation is besieged by debt caused in part by ridiculous tax cuts. The other nation, Aotearoa, is doing perfectly well thank you very much with remarkably low debt levels given what we have been through in the past couple of years.
The matters Tamaki was protesting against included the high cost of living, understaffing of hospitals, GPs being overworked, education problems, three-waters legislation, a mental health crisis and under-resourced first responders.
It did not matter that there was a great deal of contradiction in their claims. The high cost of living is predominately an internationally caused phenomenon, understaffing of hospitals and GPs being overworked are in part because we are in a one in 100 year pandemic and groups such as Destiny Church have been actively disrupting preventative measures such as the vaccination roll out and mask wearing. The mental health crisis is related. If he has a better solution for Three Waters he should present it. Presuming that Tamaki advocates for reduction in government spending to address inflation then this directly contradicts the steps necessary to address all of the other measures.
And for a more reasoned critique of Labour’s performance this year in these areas how about this analysis from Audrey Young in the Herald. She points to the temporary measures designed to address cost of living pressures. She reports significant implementation of Health policies. In education the most important policy initiative that has been achieved in my view is the expansion of the the free healthy school lunches programme from 8,000 to 200,000 children. And there is significant work being done on improving the plight of first responders. Rome was not built in a day.
At the last election Vision NZ received 0.1% of the party vote. I don’t think they pose much of a threat. Especially if they continue to annoy the population at large with the sort of antics that they engaged in the sorts of antics that occurred on Saturday.
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