Twelve months of this Government

This Government was elected 12 months ago.

And I don’t think any of us could have appreciated how bad it would have been.

The public service has been decimated. Wellington is a shadow of its former self and the drying up effect of the flow on of public spending is evident for all to see.

The economy is tanking. There is an exodus of skilled New Zealanders overseas as the Construction Industry amongst other parts of the economy have been devastated by the Government slamming on the brakes on important projects. And unemployment is on the rise with the rate increasing from 3.9% to 4.6%.

Health is taking a hit. National has walked back on its promise to give Dunedin the Hospital it deserves as well as its promise that cuts would be made to the back office and not the front office. It is busily working out how to cut funding for Doctors Clinics and Hospitals. Having an adequate number of properly paid nurses is presented as a terrible thing and Provincial Hospitals especially are showing signs of excessive strain.

Race relations have been returned to the 1960s or worse. Act has its abomination of a bill the Treaty Principles Bill approaching its introduction date. This one Act will do more to wreck Crown Iwi relations than anything else I can think of. It does not matter how many times Act is told that its principles are wrong in law and bonkers in its historical take they do not care. The aim is not to seekan informed consensus. It is to stir up racism for political advantage. Shame on them.

The environment is taking a hit. As a new example the Government is bastardising the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill by amending it to open up high protection areas to commercial fishing. Shane Jones has not met an endangered species that he does not want to kill off. The Fast Track Projects impressively manages to combine massive examples of corruption with an incredible disdain for environmental protection. And reopening up the country’s coast for oil and gas drilling is the formenting of culture wars for no actual gain apart from increased greenhouse gas emissions.

As is pretty well everything that Simeon Brown does. From trashing cycleway expenditure to making the country’s car fleet less efficient to cuts to public transport to planning for incredibly expensive Roads of National Significance suggest that his default position is to do whatever is the worst thing imaginable to address climate change.

And he is not the only dinosaur when it comes to decisions concerning transport infrastructure.

Nicola Willis’s cancelling of the replacement Cook Straight Ferries is diabolically bad. The ferries were a really, really good deal at $750 million and the other costs used by the Government were things like earthquake strengthening and adapting wharves to rising sea levels, the sorts of things that would have to be done at some stage anyway.

At least on this issue NZ First can see the wood for the trees. Winston’s statement on the weekend that the existing ferries’ lives could be extended out to a couple of decades with appropriate maintenance suggests that he is not going to be rushed into a quick decision that will no doubt mean ferries with no rail capacity.

What about the Government that was going to solve crime? The incidence of murders appears to have spiked. Military Boot Camps is nothing of the sort. Even the Military wanted to have nothing to do with them. The sentence is a standard Supervision with Residence sentence in a new facility dressed up in PR.

What about a Minister for Children who has no idea what section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act says but insists that it be repealed?

Or a Minister of Health who claims she wants the country to meets its smoke free goals but who has rolled out policies that look like they were drafted in Philip Morris’s head office?

And who thought we would have an Associate Minister of Justice (Firearms) who refuses to confirm that she will not bring back semi automatic weapons?

And what about a Prime Minister that thinks that being paid $52,000 a year to live in his own apartment is an entitlement, who does not read papers or show any desire to understand what his ministers are proposing, who thinks that poor people are bottom feeders, or who has overseen tax cuts for landlords totalling $3 billion dollars at the same time that cuts to Government spends are causing carnage?

No wonder why 40% of the country thinks that the country is in a worse position than it was a year ago and only 30% think things have improved. Amongst that part of the population no doubt are people who approve of drilling for oil, think climate change is a hoax and have an aversion to anything that has a hint of Te Ao Maori about it.

On this note I note that Michael Wood in typical middle of the road style gave NZ First and Act a score of 4/10 on One News Breakfast this morning. A gentle suggestion to Michael they are disasrous to the country and we should not be afraid to say so and mark them accordingly.

This could be a much longer post and there is a lot more that I could say but essentially this Government is ruining our country. The sooner they are voted out the better.