RaceCafe..#1...Tipsters Thread.... Share Your Fancies For Fun...Lets See Who The Best Tipsters Here Are.
Guest

Jacinda Ardern

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, rdytdy said:

 

Last night when I looked at it. Over 20,000 votes.

Ardern     35%

Collins     61%

Undecided  4%

Easy win to Collins.

A draw apparently Ted......🙄

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/122943302/election-debate-verdict-ardern-and-collins-draw-in-round-two-but-is-the-die-already-cast

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On 9/24/2020 at 9:05 PM, rdytdy said:

This will help you Uriah seeing you didn't see it:

jacinda-naked-emperor-1068x708.jpg
  •  
Reflections on the First Leaders’ Debate

The Empress Without Clothes

By
Edward Persimmon
 
A great many urban leftists are wealthy and vote for socialist parties as a kind of penitence. One such leftist took a brief pause recently from the administration of her family-owned businesses and trust accounts to ask what would have to happen for me to vote Labour. Pondering this, I imagined, short of having the better part of my brain surgically removed, there is nothing which would prompt me to vote that way.
 
 

I have always found Jacinda Ardern’s persona to be strangely repelling. Tuesday night’s leaders’ debate did nothing to alter my impression of being talked down to by a snotty intermediate school prefect, aged about twelve-and-a-half, who wants us to know that she both is captain of the hockey team and has her own pony.

The most important point, therefore, conveyed with great success by Judith Collins, is that she herself is a middle New Zealander. This may seem an obvious, unnecessary or even strange observation to make, but it highlights, significantly, the chasm in both style and substance which has opened up between the two leaders.

Not only was Collins empathetic to the pre-recorded debate questioners, her New Zealand ‘story’ placed her close to them. She displayed a practical familiarity with the work of the Auckland City Missioner. Mentioning that her husband is Samoan, she was able to speak ‘with’ and not ‘to’ the South Auckland school girl with family concerns. And finally, as the daughter of Matamata dairy farmers herself, Collins obviously knew about farming and engaged the farmer directly.

Conversely, and aside from her mangled accent – which she could have picked up at the burger joint of Auckland Airport’s travellers’ lounge – nothing that Ardern said or did during the exchange indicated that she has even visited New Zealand, let alone that she has an interest in the place.

Ardern ran through her usual set pieces, which always include the words ‘I hope’ or ‘I empathise’ precisely because she doesn’t. She deployed the ‘smiley face’, but then, increasingly, the ‘scowly face’ as the exchange wore on. And always the ‘scowly face’ when questioned, as if questioning her were an impertinence.

Where has Ardern been for the last three years? She displayed only the most superficial grasp of government policy and was clearly in not possession of facts or numbers. Labour policy is still being presented, after a term in office, as the sweaty workshop musings of a youth summer camp.

Ardern comes from a family of civil servants and has obviously never been near small business, let alone blue-collar workers, who are probably forced to use the servants’ entrance at her and Clarke’s place. Assuming the attitude of a television celebrity with minor celebrity boyfriend in tow, Ardern appeared unprepared for the rigors of debate and was visibly unimpressed when things didn’t go exactly her way. Anything off script aroused huge visible discomfort. One imagines her being similarly socially uncomfortable when not breathing the rarefied air of the Ponsonby social circuit.

Ponsonby, where the elect quaff Châteauneuf-du-Pape and get up to all manner of great japes is clearly Ardern’s environnement natif approprié.

“I don’t need your tax cut!” she snapped at Collins, responding as if Collins had just condescended to pay this wealthy Marxist’s bus fare. And she didn’t offer to give it back either when Collins prompted, the deduction being that she would trouser it, believing that she deserves every penny she earns.

Collins’s well-timed interruptions, one-liners, and grasp of simple facts prompted Ardern to sneer repeatedly during questioning – the sneer being a much closer expression of her true character than the make-believe happy/serious expressions she learned from her drama coach.

Ardern attempted to open the debate by employing Angela Merkel’s static hand gestures, but as she came under pressure these soon gave way to wild gesticulation. At one point she seemed ready to wrestle John Campbell with her hands, perhaps hoping to silence him by (metaphorically, of course) sitting on him. This is one socialist lady who does not like to be questioned, however sympathetically. It is fortunate for her that she has managed to sail through much of this year unscrutinised, by evoking mass national hysteria.

Last time around, voters were sold lies (otherwise known as ‘aspirations’) about transport and public housing, from which very little has materialised. This year’s policy offering appears to have been developed on the hoof at a Davos love-in attended by Justin Trudeau. Labour, we were told, will rapidly convert the national grid to 100 per cent renewable energy using “pumped hydro” – a term unfamiliar to many.

The reason for the lack of public interest is, perhaps, that we are entering a recession, and upmost in most constituents’ minds are issues like employment and the cost of living. For those residing outside the Herne Bay dinner circuit, “pumped hydro” doesn’t even exist. In reality, the commitment to 100 per cent renewable energy will make achieving high-speed rail to Hamilton look like a piece of cake. The entire policy appears to have been pulled off the internet.

With her towering Marie Antoinette complex on full display, the Ardern really did appear to believe that she can bamboozle the gullible with the ‘internationalist’ bons mots of the latest climate change conference, while expecting them to be too stupid to realise that they will have to pay for them.

Collins front-footed most of this, but she really needs to press the point further. Almost all of the debate questions were framed in terms of the established leftist orthodoxy. The political right should not feel it has to apologise for negating the climate agenda, or for introducing measures to reduce welfare dependency.

It is not only beneficiaries, but New Zealand’s ‘stretched middle’ which is struggling. A great deal was made of the minimum wage, which is approaching $20 an hour, but nobody pointed out that the median wage is itself only approaching $30. ‘Good’ incomes chime in at $40-70 per hour, and Ardern’s ‘very high’ $180,000 per annum earners, whom she plans to tax more, are really only on around $100 an hour gross.

Rather than suffering from ‘disparity’, Kiwi incomes are remarkably, if not ridiculously, egalitarian. Despite the reforms of the 1980s, our wage range is not in the least expansive, and remains determinedly ossified – at least in mindset. Kiwi companies are not incentivised towards performance-based pay, and on top of this both corporations and the workforce are heavily taxed. Unlike in certain overseas jurisdictions, families here often can’t get ahead, despite both parents working.

People find it difficult to understand why we need to subsidise children’s meals when, by working hard, most manage to feed their own children. And they find it incongruous that a part-time youth worker must now be paid not much less than full-time employees who have served for many years, are qualified, and possess expertise.

Collins needs to capitalise on this, and also the fact that many landlords, who are being forced to renovate their rental properties to the new ‘healthy homes’ standard, live in properties which would fail the same standard.

Ardern, who is no economist, has perhaps taken Milton Friedman’s ‘helicopter money’ concept too literally, seeking to actually throw money out of a helicopter at people she has never met, doesn’t want to meet, doesn’t understand, and probably doesn’t even like. She only needs them to vote for her.

Collins referred throughout the debate to “Miss Ardern”, an appropriate epithet for someone whose patronising soliloquies came across as those of a petulant bourgeois child impatiently explaining luncheon etiquette to the gardener. Could somebody remind me again, please: who made her the leader of our country?

 
 

A belligerent, grudge bearing old sot, who conned the electorate yet again......that’s who.....🙄

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'd like to know their viewpoints on the demise of New Zealand founded company Glaxo now known as GlaxoSmithKline and why it is now so focused on vaccines when it was set up expressly to provide Nutrious Milk and other products for those living in far harsher times than we will ever experience, that of poverty stricken and malnourished people to provide nutrients for survival.

How many of you recall Milk Biscuits?

 

Glaxo

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers?snippet=true&query=Glaxo

They are far more nutritous to all than a pill, or injection.

Be mindful the last 20 or so years how much the company has changed and been involved in Bribery & Corruption since Shangai, Hong Kong was taken from British Governance

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, meomy said:

I'd like to know their viewpoints on the demise of New Zealand founded company Glaxo now known as GlaxoSmithKline and why it is now so focused on vaccines when it was set up expressly to provide Nutrious Milk and other products for those living in far harsher times than we will ever experience, that of poverty stricken and malnourished people to provide nutrients for survival.

How many of you recall Milk Biscuits?

 

Glaxo

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers?snippet=true&query=Glaxo

They are far more nutritous to all than a pill, or injection.

Be mindful the last 20 or so years how much the company has changed and been involved in Bribery & Corruption since Shangai, Hong Kong was taken from British Governance

Don't know what this has to do with cindy but I do know Glaxo Laboratories  operated in Palmerston North about 25/30 years ago and I  think they were  owned at that time by by a multinational .

Glaxo Laboratories site, Botannical Road

The building under construction in Botanical Road was a new warehouse for Glaxo Laboratories, to be used for bulk storage. The Glaxo company was established in 1873 when J C Nathan started a small milk powder plant at Bunnythorpe, trading under the name Defiance. In 1908 the firm, using the trade name of Glaxo, introduced new baby food into the NZ and British markets. Glaxo went on to become an internationally recognised food and pharmaceutical producer. In 1950 new offices, laboratories and a pharmaceutical production factory were built in Botannical Road. Glaxo closed its operations in Palmerston North in 1995, and the buildings sold.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

More infected  Indians today - one will slip through soon.    Why is the government playing Russian Roulette.       Does she want another lockdown - well I suppose so, control freak doesn't want to slip from the Altar.         All I can say is Close The Bloody Border to people from any country that has the Virus out of control.       Anyone who wants to come here from the midst of the pandemic will just have to wait - they have had 7 or more months!!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, eljay said:

More infected  Indians today - one will slip through soon.    Why is the government playing Russian Roulette.       Does she want another lockdown - well I suppose so, control freak doesn't want to slip from the Altar.         All I can say is Close The Bloody Border to people from any country that has the Virus out of control.       Anyone who wants to come here from the midst of the pandemic will just have to wait - they have had 7 or more months!!

 

1 hour ago, eljay said:

More infected  Indians today - one will slip through soon.    Why is the government playing Russian Roulette.       Does she want another lockdown - well I suppose so, control freak doesn't want to slip from the Altar.         All I can say is Close The Bloody Border to people from any country that has the Virus out of control.       Anyone who wants to come here from the midst of the pandemic will just have to wait - they have had 7 or more months!!

They were among 12 new cases in New Zealand announced on Thursday by the Ministry of Health.

The new cases, all of whom were identified in managed isolation, ranged in age from a child under the age of 1 up to a woman over 70, according to the Ministry of Health website.

Ministry director of public health Dr Caroline McElnay said 10 of the cases had arrived from India on flight AI1354 on September 26. All 10 tested positive around day three of their stay.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@eljay

@tripple alliance

 There's laws in place already relating to Carriage Travel when one has Medical conditions.

 Did any of them have pre-existing conditions?

 Were they disclosed prior to purchasing a ticket to travel & BOARDING the aircraft they did to New Zealand? Or any other country?

Did they advise Air Crew on board they had any symptoms?

Did those Air Crew disclose any passengers who were unwell or had Medical Conditions to the Aircraft Captain?

 

The Aircraft Captain has a legal obligation to report to Immigration Authorities  those who have, or develop Medical conditions within 15 minutes of arrival according to Law.

If these people and staff have not completed required Declaration forms as true and factual,  why not?

 

How many of these people have  been followed up with within the NZ Medical systems to establish & confirm having Pre existing conditions that should have been disclosed, previously & currently?

It's a known fact in the Auckland District Health Board area there was a scam going on in within the last 10 yrs by some in Human Resources to predominantly employ a certain race when there's people already living in New Zealand, or from countries beside India who are qualified for those roles but were declined.

The ADHB Nova Magazine doesn't tell lies as it lists " New Employees " so very easy to see the disproportionate number of Indians !!!

 It's also a known fact that appointment letters were not sent out to patients who had regular check ups for medical matters and that the people  of the  same race were getting priority treatment over and above long standing New Zealand residents and natives.

 

Well done the Lange Gvt for opening the flood gates to 100k of them without factoring into account "Consequences" including ongoing Consequences - NOT .

 

It's overdue for a clean out of dishonest persons in Public Agencies, prosecuting them and sending them back to the country they came from.

Be mindful those who have previously been dishonest with Immigration tend to have a short term ban to return to New Zealand so can come back.

How many of those who have Returned to NZ since Covid 19 & locked borders fit into the Category of those Deported Persons?

What nationalities are they?

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@tripple alliance

Cindy doesn't seem to care much for the Diary Industry which Glaxo NZ is well known for been a World leader in with food and nutrition products.

GSK is tied in with Vaccine processes for Covid19, as are previously involved people with GSK who are calling the shots internationally.

 

Professor Neil Ferguson & Siouxsie Wiles both have ties to GSK...

As the founding country of Glaxo Miss Ardern should be standing up for our Diary Industry on the World stage.

Have we heard a peep out of her to EAT healthy NZ produce / grown foods to stay healthy & help prevent Covid19?

It's all been focused on finding a Vaccine...

 

The way Glaxo has been lost from it's core set up & purpose is unacceptable.

 

There's also international Reputational Damage to our image over the yrs and more so the last 8-9 months bc of an obsession with finding a Vaccine when we have very good Diary products we should be focussing on promoting worldwide to help our wider society.

It's time we all ensured those in positions of power were called into line who are tied in with GSK.

 

Joseph Nathan must be turning in his grave.

 

 

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Amendment - As are those who are known to be involved in the Bribery investigations of GSK and damages where GSK were Court ordered to pay out  millions of monies.

Did Cindy really do her Background checks and balances before firing  her gun with Covid19?

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just saw HER on TV.     What a self praising display of the usual hand waving, arm waving, head nodding & bobbing load of garbage, it was certainly up to her usual ostentatious nothingness and she was obviously enjoying every moment of being centre stage being fed the cues by her left wing press members enabling her to deliver a free party political speech on the TV.       But of course we've heard it all before, all the well worn "going hard" and "going early" and the like and, sorry lady, my only reaction was to operate the little red button on the remote.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Another green / labour f up . Here we go again incredible stupidity , this is just the same as California , Australia and now NZ , it's early spring , snow on the hills .

The Lake Ōhau fire could have been avoided if the Department of Conservation (DOC) managed high country land better, farmers say.

But DOC says fireproofing conservation land is “largely unachievable”. In a statement, Federated Farmers high country chair Rob Stokes said it was not even fire season and already nearly 50 homes and more than 5000 hectares of land had been damaged since fire erupted at Lake Ōhau, .

"In August we had the Pukaki Downs fires, also burning through DOC land, and now just weeks later another fire, again burning through DOC land. Both these fires were entirely avoidable.

Grazing in those areas had previously reduced the fire risk significantly by controlling wilding pines and grasses, he said. "There is simply no science to support destocking. Now people have lost their homes because of mismanagement by DOC."

In a statement, DOC operations manager Karina Morrow said allowing grazing on public conservation land would have “a significant negative impact on the native species”.

WELL THE FIRE CERTAINLY WILL HAVE HAD A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON NATIVE SPECIES , human native species as well .

DO you really want the greens to be a dominator/controller of labour in government , a disaster in the making . 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, tripple alliance said:

.

DO you really want the greens to be a dominator/controller of labour in government , a disaster in the making . 

Certainly not TA along with the Labour cartel of Coffey, Wall, Stevens, Robertson etc trumpeting the fact that the likely Labour parliament will be the most "queer" Government in the world after the next election! Not too late to tighten the sphincter and tick National/Act.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

NZCPR Weekly:
SPOTLIGHT ON COVID-19 RESPONSE
By Dr Muriel Newman
📷
This week’s latest Colmar Brunton poll has Labour on 47 percent, National on 33 percent, New Zealand First on 1 percent, the Greens on 7 percent, and ACT on 8 percent.

If this translates into election votes, New Zealand will have a Labour Green Government for the next three years.

Labour’s high poll rating can be largely attributed to the Covid-19 crisis.

The final Colmar Brunton poll to be published before the emergence of the virus was in November of last year. It showed National on 46 percent, Labour on 39 percent, New Zealand First on 4 percent, the Greens on 7 percent, and ACT on 2 percent. On that polling, with New Zealand First failing to make it back into Parliament, National, with the support of ACT could have formed a government.

Labour’s over-regulation of farmers, firearm owners, rental property investors, and the wider business community had contributed to their poor showing in the polls. Their failure to deliver on their election promises was also a significant factor – but more on that later.

Without a doubt the way the Prime Minister fronted the pandemic response looks likely to have saved Labour. In the May Colmar Brunton poll, taken just after the lockdown ended, they had surged 20 points to a stratospheric 59 percent, National had slumped 17 points to 29 percent, New Zealand First was on 3 percent, the Greens just under 5 percent, and ACT was steady on 2 percent.

It is a well-known phenomenon that when confronted with a national crisis, voters tend to “rally around the flag” in support of the incumbent government. Their leaders benefit from undivided and usually beneficial media attention.

But our Prime Minister exaggerated the scale of the threat we faced using claims that “tens of thousands of New Zealanders will die” if we didn’t follow her prescribed pathway.

Anyone questioning her lockdown strategy or challenging the lies that were being told to cover up such things as the chronic shortage of facemasks for front line health workers, or even the availability of the flu vaccine, were regarded as traitors to the ‘team of 5 million’ and vilified.

As a result, the Government’s response to the pandemic was never subjected to the critical scrutiny it deserved given the widespread economic and social disruption it created - including the loss of life.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, Dr John Gibson, a Professor of Economics at Waikato University, has bucked the trend by putting the Government’s management of the pandemic under the spotlight – including through research into the effectiveness of lockdowns in New Zealand and other OECD nations.

Contrary to the popular view, Professor Gibson’s findings indicate serious incompetence in the Government’s pandemic response.

He firstly points out that the deadly impact of Covid-19 was plain for all to see well before it reached our shores in late February. While other countries were proactively introducing border controls, establishing testing and tracking protocols, and setting up isolation facilities, in those early days our Government did little.

According to Professor Gibson, they “botched” the preparation for the arrival of the virus:

“I say ‘botched’ advisedly and would ask readers to consider the following four facts:
Taiwan recorded their first case of Covid-19 on 21 January, a full month before New Zealand’s first case
Taiwan usually has about three million visitors a year from China, while New Zealand gets about 400,000. The gap is even bigger in terms of visitors to China (who posed a risk of spreading the disease upon their return)
Taiwan has not had a lock-down
Yet despite earlier exposure and much greater risk due to more travel to and from China, Taiwan has just 22 cases per million of Covid-19 while the rate in New Zealand is currently 17 times higher
“Similar comparisons could be made with respect to Hong Kong or South Korea, who also provided lessons on management of this new risk. The complacency by politicians and bureaucrats in New Zealand, who had the advantage of an extra month for preparation and much greater distance from China, is staggering. Obviously that chance to respond to the risk in a low-cost manner was missed and so a very costly lockdown has resulted.”

The Prime Minister didn’t close our borders until March 19. She issued her doomsday predictions of widespread deaths four days later on March 23.

Professor Gibson explains that the exaggerated Covid fatality predictions used by the Prime Minister came from an “off-the-shelf European model” that had “no empirical data from New Zealand on key parameters”. Questioning the use of a model designed for high density, public transport-reliant Northern Hemisphere populations that are older and have poorer respiratory health, on New Zealand’s low-density, younger population, he concludes, “Prime Ministerial claims that ‘tens of thousands will die’ are vague at best and alarmist at worst.”

The Prime Minister used her alarmist claims to justify a lockdown that Professor Gibson describes as “the most stringent in the world”.

At the time the lockdown was imposed, it was difficult to understand why butchers and greengrocers were not allowed to open in the same way as supermarkets. Why greenkeepers, wildlife officers, and others who operate in isolation, were not permitted to work. Or why builders, manufacturers, and others working in jobs where social distancing was possible were not able to carry on. And we questioned why hospitals did not re-open for elective surgery once it was clear the anticipated deluge of Covid-19 cases was not going to arrive.

In analysing the effectiveness of policies to manage the spread of the virus within OECD countries - ranging from the harsh lockdown imposed in New Zealand to relatively minor restrictions in Sweden - Professor Gibson and other economists have found, from using seroprevalence studies of population samples, that Covid-19 deaths data provides a more accurate measure of infection rates than official case number tallies.

This is because with limited community testing - and virtually no testing at all of asymptomatic cases even though they are thought to comprise the majority of Covid-19 infections – the official case tallies significantly undercount the virus infection rate.

Newsroom’s political reporter Marc Daalder highlighted this accuracy problem in a report in which he compared the officially announced case tally to the case data collected by the Ministry of Health: “On March 25, the day New Zealand moved into Level 4 lockdown, the official Covid-19 case tally was 189 confirmed cases and 16 probable cases. There were actually 552 cases that would be confirmed and 60 cases that would be considered probable in New Zealand that day.”

As could be expected, in their analyses of government responses to the pandemic, economists have found that restrictions imposed before Covid infections had peaked were effective in reducing the spread of the virus, while those imposed after the peak, had no statistically significant impact on death rates.

Professor Gibson’s analysis of government responses in all 34 OECD countries found, “New Zealand is amongst 17 countries whose peak policy stringency occurred after the likely turning point in infections. For New Zealand, new infections peaked on March 16, over a week before the strictest restrictions began on 26 March.”

This result is a bombshell.

Essentially it means the huge sacrifices New Zealanders made during the lockdown had little impact on the virus because it was imposed after our infections had peaked. In other words, Labour’s response was too late!

As Professor Gibson explains, “A popular narrative that New Zealand’s policy response to Coronavirus was ‘go hard, go early’ is misleading. While restrictions were the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown in March and April, these were imposed after the likely peak in new infections. So based on comparing policy timing with likely progress of the virus, the ‘go early’ claim seems untrue.”

To make matters worse, Professor Gibson further explains that the economic decline caused by Labour’s lockdown, will result in a reduction of the life expectancy of New Zealanders. His research finds that for every 10 percent fall in a country’s GDP, life expectancy across the whole population is reduced by 1.4 years.

In other words, economic damage has a material social cost. More people will now die as a result of a lack of affordable health care.

With the latest economic data from Stats NZ showing a 12.2 percent fall in GDP over the lockdown period - the largest quarterly fall since records began - the full extent of the economic and social cost Labour has caused is only just starting to be revealed.

Professor Gibson concludes his analyses by reinforcing this point: “New Zealand went hard but not early in responding to Covid-19… Any review of New Zealand’s decision-making about Covid-19 should especially focus on what was (not) being done in February and early March. The repetition of the ‘go hard, go early’ phrase should not distract from this task.”

Rather than admitting they had responded too late in closing down our border or introducing lockdown restrictions, Labour ploughed $16 million into the taxpayer-funded public relations campaign that gave rise to the “go early” slogan despite it being false.

This is not the first time Labour has created false narratives in the minds of voters by repeating a lie. Former Labour Party Cabinet Minister Richard Prebble tells one such story:

“It was in 1981. We did a party poll and found the electorate thought that Labour had no practical positive solutions. The Labour party's policy machinery takes months and the election was only six months away. So what to do.”

Richard explains that every MP was instructed to include in every speech and radio and television appearance the statement “Labour has practical positive solutions”.

“There were prizes for MPs who managed to get the line on to the TV news. Heaven help an MP who gave a speech in parliament, no matter what the topic who did not include the line.

“We changed not one policy.

“We polled three months later and asked ‘What is a good thing about Labour’. Even a majority of National voters said that Labour had some practical, positive solutions.”

As Richard notes, “Jacinda as a graduate in PR no doubt knows the value of repeating a slogan like the false statement that we went early. We went nearly too late and way too hard.”

It’s not just the Covid response, of course, that will determine voters’ election choices. The Government’s track record of delivery of their 2017 election promises will no doubt play a part.

It does not make for happy reading.

After three years of pursuing their flagship KiwiBuild pledge to build tens of thousands of homes, Labour completed just 548! That is failure on a monumental scale.

In spite of their commitment to end homelessness, the State house waiting list has blown out from just over 4,000 in 2017 to over 17,000 in 2019.

Their plan to build light rail in Auckland was abandoned – but the increases in petrol tax that were introduced to fund it have remained in place.

Not only did the Prime Minister fail in her promise to reduce child poverty, with the number of children living in material hardship increasing from 12.7 percent in 2017 to 13.4 percent in 2019, but under her watch, between December 2017 and 2019, a record 12,000 more children have been born into benefit dependent households, significantly increasing their risk of poor life outcomes.

In spite of widespread policy failures, Labour is claiming that their track record of managing the Covid-19 health response should entitle them to win the election and lead the country’s economic recovery.

But as we now know, the truth is very different from the spin. Labour’s track record in government is littered with incompetence. But whether enough voters will be awakened to that reality - before they cast their vote - remains to be seen.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, rdytdy said:

NZCPR Weekly:
SPOTLIGHT ON COVID-19 RESPONSE
By Dr Muriel Newman
📷
This week’s latest Colmar Brunton poll has Labour on 47 percent, National on 33 percent, New Zealand First on 1 percent, the Greens on 7 percent, and ACT on 8 percent.

If this translates into election votes, New Zealand will have a Labour Green Government for the next three years.

 

Does Muriel Newman still go out with Don Brash, former National Party leader?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, rdytdy said:

NZCPR Weekly:
SPOTLIGHT ON COVID-19 RESPONSE
By Dr Muriel Newman
📷
This week’s latest Colmar Brunton poll has Labour on 47 percent, National on 33 percent, New Zealand First on 1 percent, the Greens on 7 percent, and ACT on 8 percent.

If this translates into election votes, New Zealand will have a Labour Green Government for the next three years.

Labour’s high poll rating can be largely attributed to the Covid-19 crisis.

The final Colmar Brunton poll to be published before the emergence of the virus was in November of last year. It showed National on 46 percent, Labour on 39 percent, New Zealand First on 4 percent, the Greens on 7 percent, and ACT on 2 percent. On that polling, with New Zealand First failing to make it back into Parliament, National, with the support of ACT could have formed a government.

Labour’s over-regulation of farmers, firearm owners, rental property investors, and the wider business community had contributed to their poor showing in the polls. Their failure to deliver on their election promises was also a significant factor – but more on that later.

Without a doubt the way the Prime Minister fronted the pandemic response looks likely to have saved Labour. In the May Colmar Brunton poll, taken just after the lockdown ended, they had surged 20 points to a stratospheric 59 percent, National had slumped 17 points to 29 percent, New Zealand First was on 3 percent, the Greens just under 5 percent, and ACT was steady on 2 percent.

It is a well-known phenomenon that when confronted with a national crisis, voters tend to “rally around the flag” in support of the incumbent government. Their leaders benefit from undivided and usually beneficial media attention.

But our Prime Minister exaggerated the scale of the threat we faced using claims that “tens of thousands of New Zealanders will die” if we didn’t follow her prescribed pathway.

Anyone questioning her lockdown strategy or challenging the lies that were being told to cover up such things as the chronic shortage of facemasks for front line health workers, or even the availability of the flu vaccine, were regarded as traitors to the ‘team of 5 million’ and vilified.

As a result, the Government’s response to the pandemic was never subjected to the critical scrutiny it deserved given the widespread economic and social disruption it created - including the loss of life.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, Dr John Gibson, a Professor of Economics at Waikato University, has bucked the trend by putting the Government’s management of the pandemic under the spotlight – including through research into the effectiveness of lockdowns in New Zealand and other OECD nations.

Contrary to the popular view, Professor Gibson’s findings indicate serious incompetence in the Government’s pandemic response.

He firstly points out that the deadly impact of Covid-19 was plain for all to see well before it reached our shores in late February. While other countries were proactively introducing border controls, establishing testing and tracking protocols, and setting up isolation facilities, in those early days our Government did little.

According to Professor Gibson, they “botched” the preparation for the arrival of the virus:

“I say ‘botched’ advisedly and would ask readers to consider the following four facts:
Taiwan recorded their first case of Covid-19 on 21 January, a full month before New Zealand’s first case
Taiwan usually has about three million visitors a year from China, while New Zealand gets about 400,000. The gap is even bigger in terms of visitors to China (who posed a risk of spreading the disease upon their return)
Taiwan has not had a lock-down
Yet despite earlier exposure and much greater risk due to more travel to and from China, Taiwan has just 22 cases per million of Covid-19 while the rate in New Zealand is currently 17 times higher
“Similar comparisons could be made with respect to Hong Kong or South Korea, who also provided lessons on management of this new risk. The complacency by politicians and bureaucrats in New Zealand, who had the advantage of an extra month for preparation and much greater distance from China, is staggering. Obviously that chance to respond to the risk in a low-cost manner was missed and so a very costly lockdown has resulted.”

The Prime Minister didn’t close our borders until March 19. She issued her doomsday predictions of widespread deaths four days later on March 23.

Professor Gibson explains that the exaggerated Covid fatality predictions used by the Prime Minister came from an “off-the-shelf European model” that had “no empirical data from New Zealand on key parameters”. Questioning the use of a model designed for high density, public transport-reliant Northern Hemisphere populations that are older and have poorer respiratory health, on New Zealand’s low-density, younger population, he concludes, “Prime Ministerial claims that ‘tens of thousands will die’ are vague at best and alarmist at worst.”

The Prime Minister used her alarmist claims to justify a lockdown that Professor Gibson describes as “the most stringent in the world”.

At the time the lockdown was imposed, it was difficult to understand why butchers and greengrocers were not allowed to open in the same way as supermarkets. Why greenkeepers, wildlife officers, and others who operate in isolation, were not permitted to work. Or why builders, manufacturers, and others working in jobs where social distancing was possible were not able to carry on. And we questioned why hospitals did not re-open for elective surgery once it was clear the anticipated deluge of Covid-19 cases was not going to arrive.

In analysing the effectiveness of policies to manage the spread of the virus within OECD countries - ranging from the harsh lockdown imposed in New Zealand to relatively minor restrictions in Sweden - Professor Gibson and other economists have found, from using seroprevalence studies of population samples, that Covid-19 deaths data provides a more accurate measure of infection rates than official case number tallies.

This is because with limited community testing - and virtually no testing at all of asymptomatic cases even though they are thought to comprise the majority of Covid-19 infections – the official case tallies significantly undercount the virus infection rate.

Newsroom’s political reporter Marc Daalder highlighted this accuracy problem in a report in which he compared the officially announced case tally to the case data collected by the Ministry of Health: “On March 25, the day New Zealand moved into Level 4 lockdown, the official Covid-19 case tally was 189 confirmed cases and 16 probable cases. There were actually 552 cases that would be confirmed and 60 cases that would be considered probable in New Zealand that day.”

As could be expected, in their analyses of government responses to the pandemic, economists have found that restrictions imposed before Covid infections had peaked were effective in reducing the spread of the virus, while those imposed after the peak, had no statistically significant impact on death rates.

Professor Gibson’s analysis of government responses in all 34 OECD countries found, “New Zealand is amongst 17 countries whose peak policy stringency occurred after the likely turning point in infections. For New Zealand, new infections peaked on March 16, over a week before the strictest restrictions began on 26 March.”

This result is a bombshell.

Essentially it means the huge sacrifices New Zealanders made during the lockdown had little impact on the virus because it was imposed after our infections had peaked. In other words, Labour’s response was too late!

As Professor Gibson explains, “A popular narrative that New Zealand’s policy response to Coronavirus was ‘go hard, go early’ is misleading. While restrictions were the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown in March and April, these were imposed after the likely peak in new infections. So based on comparing policy timing with likely progress of the virus, the ‘go early’ claim seems untrue.”

To make matters worse, Professor Gibson further explains that the economic decline caused by Labour’s lockdown, will result in a reduction of the life expectancy of New Zealanders. His research finds that for every 10 percent fall in a country’s GDP, life expectancy across the whole population is reduced by 1.4 years.

In other words, economic damage has a material social cost. More people will now die as a result of a lack of affordable health care.

With the latest economic data from Stats NZ showing a 12.2 percent fall in GDP over the lockdown period - the largest quarterly fall since records began - the full extent of the economic and social cost Labour has caused is only just starting to be revealed.

Professor Gibson concludes his analyses by reinforcing this point: “New Zealand went hard but not early in responding to Covid-19… Any review of New Zealand’s decision-making about Covid-19 should especially focus on what was (not) being done in February and early March. The repetition of the ‘go hard, go early’ phrase should not distract from this task.”

Rather than admitting they had responded too late in closing down our border or introducing lockdown restrictions, Labour ploughed $16 million into the taxpayer-funded public relations campaign that gave rise to the “go early” slogan despite it being false.

This is not the first time Labour has created false narratives in the minds of voters by repeating a lie. Former Labour Party Cabinet Minister Richard Prebble tells one such story:

“It was in 1981. We did a party poll and found the electorate thought that Labour had no practical positive solutions. The Labour party's policy machinery takes months and the election was only six months away. So what to do.”

Richard explains that every MP was instructed to include in every speech and radio and television appearance the statement “Labour has practical positive solutions”.

“There were prizes for MPs who managed to get the line on to the TV news. Heaven help an MP who gave a speech in parliament, no matter what the topic who did not include the line.

“We changed not one policy.

“We polled three months later and asked ‘What is a good thing about Labour’. Even a majority of National voters said that Labour had some practical, positive solutions.”

As Richard notes, “Jacinda as a graduate in PR no doubt knows the value of repeating a slogan like the false statement that we went early. We went nearly too late and way too hard.”

It’s not just the Covid response, of course, that will determine voters’ election choices. The Government’s track record of delivery of their 2017 election promises will no doubt play a part.

It does not make for happy reading.

After three years of pursuing their flagship KiwiBuild pledge to build tens of thousands of homes, Labour completed just 548! That is failure on a monumental scale.

In spite of their commitment to end homelessness, the State house waiting list has blown out from just over 4,000 in 2017 to over 17,000 in 2019.

Their plan to build light rail in Auckland was abandoned – but the increases in petrol tax that were introduced to fund it have remained in place.

Not only did the Prime Minister fail in her promise to reduce child poverty, with the number of children living in material hardship increasing from 12.7 percent in 2017 to 13.4 percent in 2019, but under her watch, between December 2017 and 2019, a record 12,000 more children have been born into benefit dependent households, significantly increasing their risk of poor life outcomes.

In spite of widespread policy failures, Labour is claiming that their track record of managing the Covid-19 health response should entitle them to win the election and lead the country’s economic recovery.

But as we now know, the truth is very different from the spin. Labour’s track record in government is littered with incompetence. But whether enough voters will be awakened to that reality - before they cast their vote - remains to be seen.

Unlikely, unfortunately.....a smiley media “personality” is more important than ability and competence apparently.....🙄

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On 10/1/2020 at 3:25 PM, eljay said:

More infected  Indians today - one will slip through soon.    Why is the government playing Russian Roulette.       Does she want another lockdown - well I suppose so, control freak doesn't want to slip from the Altar.         All I can say is Close The Bloody Border to people from any country that has the Virus out of control.       Anyone who wants to come here from the midst of the pandemic will just have to wait - they have had 7 or more months!!

interesting that Govt is ow talking about targeting 'hot spot' countries and making it harder for NZ to receive people from them....DUH!!!
Further proof hat Labour/NZF are poor managers of the most important part of Covid management  - keeping the border safe. Mistake after mistake after mistake..and now they're twigging to the threat from places like INDIA 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As the old saying goes - they would'nt know if the postman was up them unless he blew his whistle!

 

Which also begs the comment - posties don't have a whistle these days and also it won't be long before they will be but a dim memory.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, eljay said:

As the old saying goes - they would'nt know if the postman was up them unless he blew his whistle!

 

Which also begs the comment - posties don't have a whistle these days and also it won't be long before they will be but a dim memory.

They run you over these days in those expensive looking battery vehicles... far cry from the legends pushing bikes rain hail or shine getting attacked by dogs. What a cruisy ‘job’ 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, weasel57 said:

interesting that Govt is ow talking about targeting 'hot spot' countries and making it harder for NZ to receive people from them....DUH!!!
Further proof hat Labour/NZF are poor managers of the most important part of Covid management  - keeping the border safe. Mistake after mistake after mistake..and now they're twigging to the threat from places like INDIA 

What Covid Eljay? 

All we are seeing is coronavirus,and PCR tests are far from accurate. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Uriah Heap said:

How disappointing that we have not yet heard from tripple alliance; declaring Judith Collins the winner of last nights debate. I can only assume he's unwell.

you can forget about all polls now.

They are all fake and think the public is stupid....prob not wrong there.  

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.