Our coalition government would do well to reflect that a country is never grateful for the actual improvements a governing party makes if it simultaneously backtracks on promises important to the people. Moreover, the National Party’s folly in ignoring the fact that the electorate has long sent it the message that their leader, Christopher Luxon, is not perceived to be up to the mark, is costing them hugely.

New Zealand would fare better to adopt the Swiss system which follows the example of the Roman Republic - requiring the country’s leader to step down after a year, so another can then take his/her place. The Swiss President, handing over the reins of power after only one year for the next in line to step up (usually the finance minister) operates simply as primus inter pares, i.e. the first among equals. This President does not behave as Luxon does - as if he is CEO of a company - but simply the nominal head of their seven member cabinet. In this way, no highly determined individual like a Geoffrey Palmer, a Jacinda Ardern, a Helen Clark or a John Key can dominate the cabinet and push their own agenda on the country, with the disastrous results we have seen from all four.

The National Party, by not listening to the country and continuing to endorse Luxon - while at the same time continually caving in to the demands of a small minority of identity-obsessed part-Maori - has left very many New Zealanders with the intention of no longer voting for them in the forthcoming election. Reneging on its promise, National has supported co-governance in various areas and extravagantly bestowed millions of dollars in funding on supposed Maori organisations - although there are in fact no Maori individuals left in this country. In other words, Maori no longer exist as a separate ethnic group.

Moreover, New Zealanders are fed up with the constant targeting of special funding towards supposed Maori interests, and are not pleased to see $48 million now being targeted for Maori Broadcasting. Why? Given that we no longer have any Maori in New Zealand, but only part-Maori and as most of these individuals are now of predominantly other genetic descent than Maori, why do we continue to throw money at them, particularly when the Maori economy is worth about $126 billion?

Moreover, scores of millions of dollars have accumulatively been spent on inventing that artificial language te reo. Te reo is not (as constantly claimed) the genuine Māori language, which understandably had a very limited number of words. Te reo is overwhelmingly inauthentic, a made-up language being inflicted upon the country, on teachers, and on school children who could be learning far more worthwhile languages. Yet the National Party MP Tama Potaka has instructed the Department of Conservation (DOC) to use te reo “everywhere and anywhere”, directly contradicting the Government’s official position that public service departments and Crown entities should communicate primarily in English, for obvious reasons.

When Prime Minister Luxon was asked to comment on this, he simply dodged answering, and government agencies and departments have not received any official government directive to do this. It is little wonder that Luxon is performing so abysmally in the polls. At 29% he has become a liability to National, deservedly so, since they did not have the political courage to ask him to step down when they saw his poor performance as leader.

It is little wonder that Don Brash, in a recent communication, asks what Luxon actually stands for. Contrary to the promises made before the last election, co-governance has been inserted into public institutions. The principle of equal citizenship has been increasingly replaced by racial preference. Although long advocated, the government is not abolishing the Maori seats, so there has been an historic transfer of power on racist grounds. We do not have one electoral roll. i.e. the same democratic arrangement for every New Zealander. We have Maori seats and Maori wards, with the completely irrelevant Treaty of Waitangi, for some obscure reason, constantly being treated as relevant to the education curriculum and everywhere else possible.

Why is this happening?

This is a crucial point. As individuals claiming to be Maori are in fact only part-Maori (with many by far predominantly European, or of another ethnicity) in the eyes of many, their claim to be Maori is fraudulent. Given that this is the case, it is high time our pusillanimous government stopped dodging this issue and provided a legal definition of Maori, which would rule out by far the majority of those with their hands out, continually obtaining special funding and privileges on the basis of being Maori - which they basically are not. It should also be noted that many -in fact probably most part-Maori - do not agree with our successive governments kowtowing to the demands of the extremist, if not actually fanatical minority, constantly seeking special financial advantages and prior positioning on the grounds of race. Probably the majority of part-Maori, like all other New Zealanders keep their head down, working to provide for themselves and their families.

What we in fact now have is a tyranny of the minority up against the cowardice of our successive governments. And behind the scenes public sector organisations which should be neutral are calling the shots, backing left-wing politicians. For example, officials have been “warning” that the English-first logo change could harm Crown- Maori relationships. A typical example has been the claim that “the proposed changes are likely to be seen as inherently detrimental and a reprioritisation of the promotion of te reo, the language in need of revitalization in order to survive, and is diminishing Crown efforts to meet its duties of active protection and partnership, thus doing material harm to the Crown Maori relationship.” Another briefing said that the branding change would not benefit trust in the public sector.

This, of course, is sheer bunkum. We already know te reo is not the Maori language, although it is fraudulently claimed to be so. The assertion is simply emotional blackmail. Nor has there ever been any partnership between the Crown and the disparate Maori tribes scattered throughout the country at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi which having served its original purpose, but now constantly reinvented, should be consigned - like many other treaties - to the dustbins of history.

All this squandering of money on supposed Maori interests has long been costing the country a great deal, with hundreds of millions of dollars accumulatively diverted from cash-strapped areas which badly need it - such as health and mental health services, education, our hospitals - and for important medications such as those freely available for cancer overseas but not available in this country. And it is fundamentally quite shocking that we have become a racist society, with the concept of equality before the law being dismantled, piece by piece, including by activist judges invoking the nebulous concept of tikanga to take precedence over common law. That every New Zealander is supposed to be treated the same is obviously now a foreign concept to our successive governments.

Moreover, with iwi influence now infiltrating our various local councils it has become shockingly prevalent for these pseudo-tribes (in fact corporate entities, many paying little or no tax on spurious grounds) to demand a pay-off. A correspondent who owns and operates a consulting engineering practice and works for a number of organisations tells me that the NZDF (New Zealand Defence Force) maintains a supplier approval system and wanted to know his Maori shareholding and Maori directors. The Christchurch City Council asked similarly. In reply he said that he refused to work with racist organisations. He added that he has worked all over the world in many different societies and never has he been asked such questions …the only thing that has mattered is whether he could can do the job. He says it has to stop.

That rogue, pseudo-tribe Ngai Tahu does not think so. With its tentacles stretching everywhere, and while trying to take control of the waterways of the South Island, it is also trying to impose consideration of its supposed “cultural values” on land use and consent decisions over the Gore district down south.

We have long been waiting for our successive governments to grow a spine and stand up to the bullying of fanatical part-Maori constantly seeking more and more advantages on racist grounds. It is utterly infamous that things have been to allowed to deteriorate so far in this country that the idea of equality before the law is being dismantled, piece by piece. Every New Zealander should be treated the same. What we now have is quite obviously a system of apartheid with officials, councils and even the government prioritising supposed Maori interests.

But why?

The public’s disillusion with the Luxon-led National party extends to its shocking ignorance with regard to the climate catastrophe scam which includes Luxon’s foolish commitment to continuing support for Net Zero 2050 – now being abandoned throughout Western countries. Other policies have raised concern, such as granting $60 million to a Fletcher Building subsidiary, Golden Bay Cement, which faces closure basically due to rising carbon costs under our foolish Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Given the excellent articles in overseas publications examining the agenda behind the demonization of CO2, there is really little excuse for the ignorance of our governments and their researchers.

Part of the blame for this ignorance, however, can be laid at the door of publications like Stuff whose editorial staff have quite blatantly stated they will not publish any articles challenging this flawed hypothesis. Whereas our media were once at the forefront of opposing censorship they are now promoting it themselves. However, deliberately preventing public debate can well be regarded as fundamentally corrupt - as much as when they succumbed to the bribe of government handouts by Jacinda Ardern’s government - provided they endorsed government policy – a shocking capitulation by the mainstream media which should be playing a central role as a free press in a democracy.

With other government policies now under scrutiny, but with a majority of New Zealanders very keen to no longer vote for a Labour government which needlessly inflicted shocking debt upon the country, and promoted racism, attention is now being focused on New Zealand First. ACT is also under scrutiny, with the best policies in relation to tackling the fanatical proposals of that small but vociferous minority of part- Maori continually seeking self-advantage. Its core principle is that need, not race, should be the priority, it advocates equal rights for all our citizens, and removing Maori prioritising in public services and of activist minorities’ reinterpretation (or rather, reinvention) of the original provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi.

However, ACT leader David Seymour’s support for the horrific practice of abortion to be legal even up to birth - as well as his (and the kind, compassionate and caring Jacinda Ardern’s) actually voting against any medical care or support to be given to a live aborted child has repelled many. Do Seymour, Ardern and those others have no moral compass?

Seymour’s equal enthusiasm for the practice of euthanasia, recently voted down in the UK, must deter many, given what has happened overseas where the expansion of assisted suicide puts pressure on so many. Individuals in Canada state they are being pressured to choose assisted suicide to save the expense of state care, with the element of choice now even being removed from some.

He cannot possibly be unaware that this is a very slippery slope, with these now horrific consequences in Canada and elsewhere. As one commentator has noted, “Once you cross that line, you’ve crossed it forever. If it just becomes the norm that at a certain age or with certain diseases, you are now a bit of a burden, that’s a really dangerous position to be in.” It is little wonder that euthanasia has now become a subject of intense political debate in Canada with approximately 5% of all deaths in the country now by euthanasia, and pressure put on the elderly or disabled to choose this course. ACT is apparently hoping that given its new addition of the flamboyant television personality, Paul Henry, its chances in the polls will improve. However he is a controversial choice given what some regard as his inappropriate centre-staging, his childish behaviour and his crude language.

However, New Zealand First’s leader also has a chequered record, and foremost is Winston Peters’ neglected promise to restore all the English names to our government departments and institutions. He can be credited with ensuring that English is now belatedly recognised as an official language of this country – but this is by no means the same thing. Not only has he completely reneged on his promise to ensure this would happen, but his deputy, Shane Jones, already deservedly in hot water elsewhere, has dismissed concerns raised about this not happening. Jones has said it is “a trivial matter” that the English-first directive is not being adhered to by government agencies - nor indeed by the government itself which still has “Te Kawanatanga o Aotearoa” first as a header in bold text followed by “New Zealand Government” in non-bold text (see https://www.govt.nz/). And of course not only did Maori have no word for a government, but the name of this country was not Aotearoa.

This issue is far from being a trivial matter - a promise given is just that. And it has long been an important issue for most New Zealanders. Ardern’s government’s renaming all the government departments and institutions in te reo was ridiculous, even given her racist agenda behind it, as te reo is not the Maori language at all. One can only wonder what the original Maori for the Department of Inland Revenue is supposed to have been…

Above all, restoring the English names to our government departments and institutions would make it obvious to all what they actually stand for. What, for example, is Oranga Tamariki, or Whanau Ora? Most New Zealanders find these terms unintelligible and wouldn’t have a clue. Restoring the English names would also be part of the fight back against the growing Maorification of this country which has caused so many problems.

It has been pointed out that ACT are correct to highlight the failings of the Coalition in Maori-related areas, and Shane Jones should be neither denigrating them for doing so nor dodging the issue by deferring to Judith Collins who, unsurprisingly, did a good impression of not wanting to do anything to ensure that the English-first directive is followed. Neither Jones nor the media seem to have taken on board the fact that many New Zealanders voted for New Zealand First because among other sensible policies it was committed to restoring English names first for government agencies. Did Jones just lie, pretending to acquiesce in his party’s pledged policy which of course is simply common sense? He has also been forced to backtrack on commercial fishing rules which, incredibly enough, would have removed minimum legal size limits for commercial fishing. He has also been severely criticised for favouring bottom trawling with its detrimental environmental effect on the seabed. However he has also shown a welcome interest in the judicial activism now challenging Parliament’s role.

However, the equally slippery Winston has been no better. Concerned that restoring the English names, as promised, wasn’t happening, a correspondent tells me that he emailed New Zealand First in 2024 and was told that “changing the names of the government departments was not on the list of the most pressing tasks” ( i.e. those in the coalition government’s 100 day plan), “unfortunately, and while it is important for us, too, I’m unable to give you a date as to when each appropriate department will revert to English first.”

This, of course, is utter nonsense. It could easily have been undertaken immediately with no loss of focus on other important issues. The question is being raised: to whom is this government disgracefully bending the knee? Simeon Brown, to his credit (although he has not performed well in other areas) did this immediately, requiring the management of the absurdly named Waka Kotahi to reinstate itself as the New Zealand Transport Agency. As this is one of the government departments which has now obviously been infiltrated by Maori-preferment interests, the NZTA keeps on board Waka Kotahi as well and is now replacing signs right around the country substituting the word Kura for School. Each sign is a total waste of money in materials and labour. The NZTA is a typical example of all those institutions nationwide which have been infiltrated by those with a basically neo-Marxist agenda of fragmenting the country by attacking the values and customs of the majority.

At any rate, the correspondent asked if we were to infer that ensuring English first naming would be implemented is no longer important to New Zealand First. He of course got no reply, but stated that he regards them as a pack of quislings. And although Winston has been a highly competent Minister of Foreign Affairs, there are other issues on which he has not delivered, as with a pre-election promise of pay rises for care workers, and his vow to repeal punishing tobacco taxes. Moreover, his welcoming the deeply compromised Stuart Nash as a new member, saying he would have no problem giving him a senior position, showed very poor judgment, given that Nash was far from trustworthy in his previous Labour Party role - and his utterly crude definition of what a woman is.

I, too, had much the same response as this correspondent who called the New Zealand First parliamentary office, simply getting fobbed off with a vague assurance that it would happen in due course. It hasn’t happened at all as far as New Zealand First is concerned. Many think we have simply been lied to. Yet this issue is by no means unimportant, although corrupt media have no intention of pointing this out. It is part of the almost complete takeover of this country by powerful iwi, embracing small but fanatical and extremist groups of part-Maori.

There is little doubt that a great deal is going wrong , and that there is a failure on the part of our politicians to rectify things which obviously need addressing. A question that needs to be asked of any society is: what is going wrong and what should be done about it?

And one of the biggest issues now facing us is Muslim immigration. Informed New Zealanders know very well what our government does not seem to have taken on board - that multiculturalism does not work. Social cohesion is fragmented, and where a Muslim population has grown large enough, inevitably it is infiltrated by extremists. Parts of Germany, France and Britain are now avoided by their mainstream populations, and we have the example close to hand of Australia where Islamophobia is on the rise, given public reaction to last year’s Bondi Beach massacre. There is concern, too that in Sydney’s best-known Muslim neighbourhood, 61% of its population is Muslim.

While the majority of New Zealand’s Muslims live law-abiding lives there are always integration challenges and security concerns involving at this stage only a small fraction of individuals. However, the fact that we now have approximately 85 mosques in the country and three Islamic schools raises concerns, together with the fact that a prominent Muslim spokesperson is now apparently importuning the government to create anti-blasphemy laws - in direct opposition to our belief in free speech as essential to a free society. What might be next - another Salman Rushdie?

The people of a country have the right to decide whom they want to allow to come and live among them. But New Zealanders have not been consulted, and our apparently ignorant government seems to have no idea of what is happening overseas when societies become fractured. Our poorly thought-out immigration policies are encouraging this. Shane Jones’s unpleasant attack on the Indian population, many of whom work hard as small shop owners serving the community, is unwarranted. Hinduism is not antipathetic to the Christian values on which this country was founded, and many Indians are themselves Christian. However, questions have been raised about what is seen as an inordinate number of Indians being allowed into the country, some with quite different cultural values and less than desirable standards of honesty. Once again the fact that New Zealanders themselves are not being consulted about the number and origin of immigrants allowed into the country has aroused resentment.

It makes far more sense for a country like New Zealand, founded on Christian values, to welcome those whose cultural mores are the same. Islam is fundamentally opposed to Christianity, targeting Christianity worldwide, and a number of Muslims are basically antisemitic. It would have dismayed many when the typically ignorant Christopher Luxon, questioned about our immigration policies, said we were non-discriminating.

This is the very last thing we should be. We should be highly discriminating, bearing in mind that multiculturalism has been a disaster everywhere it has been tried. And we would be very foolish to think that we should be endorsing the social fragmentation of our country. This is not a matter of Islamophobia, but of sheer common sense. From that fine Australian commentor, Bill Muehlenberg comes this warning: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/08/01/what-we-must-know-about-the-spread-of-islam/

“Allowing Muslim immigration is one of the most idiotic policy mistakes our country has ever made.” Brandon Gill.

Many now think that we are losing the country. And I hear on all sides people understandably saying that they simply don’t want to vote for any of our political parties.

However, if individuals will not bother to stir themselves to fight back for our country, to contact politicians to make their views known, they deserve to lose the country. A friend of mine laments that when she asked a grown-up son and daughter to oppose a very poor decision made by our local council they refused, saying it wouldn’t make any difference. They should be ashamed of themselves.

It has been said that the price of democracy is eternal vigilance. And I recall the reminder attributed to Dante that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

We can fight to win this country back - as the Swiss did. It needs a tipping point of New Zealanders to help support the 100 Days initiative, to tell others, to approach their MPs. And an intelligent philanthropist to help fund this proposal to make it far more widely known would be a wonderful asset.

www.100days.co.nz

Amy Brooke

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

It has never been more obvious that genuine electoral reform is needed. New Zealanders are becoming totally fed up with being fobbed off by ministers who should be personally accountable for the portfolios over which they preside.

Although Minister Simeon Brown has taken promising action in some areas, he has also, in important areas, behaved as an MP apparently committed to preserving the interests of the bureaucracies over which he presides, rather than behaving as he was elected to do - representing the interests of New Zealanders at large. Brown is by no means the only minister doing so, but egregious examples of his failure in this respect are shown below.

Chris Bishop also seems to have no control over the totally unnecessary and extravagant spending of the NZTA. All over the country a proliferation of unnecessary road signs is being erected, such as: Share the Road; Slippery When Wet (on parts of the road neither more nor less slippery than any others, when wet). More and more depictions of cyclists are being erected by the sides of the road; of children walking; even pictures of a cow near paddocks which in fact have horses in them. More signs now unnecessarily say School Bus Route. Others indicate perfectly obvious side roads ahead which have always been there - or indicate a turn-off into someone’s property. The ever-increasing proliferation of signs on stretches of the road which simply don’t need them, and never had them before, has now become virtually visual pollution.

But worst of all is that the woke NZTA is now replacing signs that used to say School. New signs, instead saying Kura, are now being erected, reportedly all over New Zealand. Each of those totally unnecessary Kura signs costs money. Add in the labour costs, the many hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, spent totally unnecessarily in a cash-strapped economy – apparently to pay obeisance to the egos of a minority only of part-Maori descent - and we have money totally wasted. If the NZTA budget has money to spare, it should go towards useful projects like putting up median barriers to help prevent bad accidents, to fill in potholes, to improve roads where accidents frequently occur. So why is Bishop allowing this wastage? Does he have no control over his portfolio?

However, many New Zealanders would have initially thought well of Simeon Brown who, when first appointed Minister of the NZTA, in line with the Coalition government’s pledge to restore the English names to all our departments and institutions to enable New Zealanders to actually understand what they stand for, immediately removed its ridiculous name of Waka Kotahi. He was about the only one who did. Some, such as Shane Jones, have indicated they have no intention of keeping their promise to the electorate.

Minister Simeon Brown kept that promise, earning New Zealanders’ respect, even if he then disappointingly lacked the courage to maintain his support for Simon O’Connor, who, when Christopher Luxon pulled rank on him, withdrew his pro-life comment in support of the US Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v Wade decision. Apparently free speech is hazardous for MPs if a leader doesn’t like it.

Moreover, on at least two other important issues, Brown has been a disappointment, both as Minister of Health and Minister of State-Owned Enterprises, ostensibly overseeing the actions of New Zealand Post, but doing absolutely nothing to represent the interests of the community. On the contrary, he has lined himself up with the interests of the bureaucracies over which he presides.

^{Parliament House - are our lawmakers still listening to the people?}

For example, when I brought to the Minister’s attention the fact that for an individual to get a job even as a porter or cleaner at Nelson Hospital – (with many highly qualified graduates, even those with PhDs, deprived of their jobs by AI, and desperate for any work to gain an income and pay for their mortgages) - that racist demands were made, I was simply fobbed off.

Linked here and summaried below are the required commitments needed to work as a cleaner or orderly at Nelson Hospital, which I sent on to Brown and which require the demonstration of specific political beliefs on Maori issues and “equity”, e.g.:

– “Remains focused on the pursuit of Māori health gain as well as achieving equitable health outcomes for Māori”.

– “Supports tangata whenua- and mana whenua-led change to deliver mana motuhake and Māori self-determination in the design, delivery and monitoring of health care”

– “Actively supports kaimahi Māori by improving attraction, recruitment, retention, development, and leadership.”

– “Commits to helping all people achieve equitable health outcomes.”

– “Shows a willingness to personally take a stand for equity.”

– “Supports Māori-led and Pacific-led responses.”

– “Works with peers in Hauora Māori Service and Pacific Health Business Unit to ensure the voice of and direct aspirations of Māori and Pacific People are reflected in planning and delivery of services.”

As can also be seen, the health system is still overarchingly racialised, despite “Health New Zealand” being (sometimes) prioritised. For example:

– “6. The health system will reinforce Te Tiriti principles and obligations.”

– “Aotearoa New Zealand” is used throughout

– “Te Mauri o Rongo consists of four pou (pillars) within it, including: Wairuatanga – working with heart, the strong sense of purpose and commitment to service that health workers bring to their mahi. Rangatiratanga – as organisations we support our people to lead. (...)”

All this to possibly get a job as a porter at a local hospital!

These demands of course are quite outrageous, deeply divisive, overwhelmingly racist and totally unnecessary. And as Simeon Brown is the Minister of Health, I emailed him, asking his office to make sure that the minister saw this. I asked him why this was being allowed, pointed out it was a disgrace and that as he is the Minister for Health he should be putting a stop to this. I also asked for a reply to my email – which, as New Zealanders know, is now very rare. Most MPs and ministers simply don’t bother to reply, apart from the automatic acknowledging of an email. Doubtless this may improve closer to the election time…

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However, I had made it plain that I expected a reply by copying in others such as the leaders of all the political parties, some senior media and political commentators, pointing out that these were prescribed racist beliefs for a job at Nelson Hospital. The fact that I copied in others was probably the reason I got a reply at all, unsatisfactory as it was.

An answer from Brown’s office, unsigned, as now so often the case - which is also completely unacceptable - thanked me on behalf of the Minister for my email and said, “The Minister has noted your correspondence and has asked Health NZ to respond to you directly about the issues you have raised. Please be assured that you will receive a formal response in due course.”

This of course is unacceptable, simply passing the buck. Apart from the fact that “in due course” is meaningless and could mean anything from several months to a year or more, it is not up to Health New Zealand to respond to me, but to Simeon Brown. This is an issue between the Minister and Health New Zealand, and it is Simeon Brown who should be investigating this issue on my behalf, and that of all other New Zealanders. I pointed this out and asked for the minister to now do so and that I would wait for his response. It may well not come at all.

As Minister in charge of State-Owned Enterprises, Brown, whose portfolio includes New Zealand Post, has apparently no intention at all of representing New Zealanders, many of whom have lost their local postal outlet and who are faced with New Zealand Post quite untruthfully claiming that nobody in future will have to travel more than 4-5km to the nearest postal outlet. New Zealand Post has been poorly managed for years and some of its recent decisions are particularly poor ones, as an organisation of rural women - and even postal workers themselves - have pointed out.

This particular decision to remove postal boxes, ostensibly to economise, is costing New Zealanders all across the country. A particularly bad one has been the decision to close one at a Four-Square shop at Atawhai, in northeast Nelson. This is because it was the first place where postal services could be accessed after the drive from the Rai Valley, 46 kilometres from Nelson. The service provided by staff was excellent and one could park right outside the store, so there was no need to carry heavy parcels a distance.

In a typically ill-thought decision, New Zealand Post has removed these postal facilities. Anyone wanting to post a parcel now has to drive an extra ten minutes, into Nelson city itself to the Paper Plus bookstore in the main street, where it is at times almost impossible to find parking there, or in the often-full carpark behind. One may have to carry a heavy parcel or parcels some distance, possibly in the rain, even if one can find parking – hard on the elderly and infirm. Moreover, thanks to Chris Bishop, they may now also be faced with individuals on bikes, scooters, and skateboards swerving in and out of pedestrians on the footpath, making our cities increasingly dangerous for those on foot. This also contributes towards making it harder for shops to attract customers who would sooner buy online than keep encountering near misses and risking broken limbs.

^{Except, of course, when it isn’t.}

Not only does this extra travel add to the congestion in the city and burn up expensive fuel, residents of northeast Nelson, for example from Hira, are now faced with a 20-kilometre trip into the city – a return trip of 40 km - simply to post a parcel, giving the lie to NZPost’s claim no one has to travel more than five kilometres to access a postal outlet. Residents out on the Moutere who have also lost their postal services are now faced with the same distance demands – quite possibly happening also in other areas of New Zealand.

Apparently, Simeon Brown couldn’t care less. When he was appealed to for help there was the usual fob off. I was assured that he had made his expectations clear to New Zealand Post that it should operate a reliable and customer-focused business. Apparently, he did not want to interfere with its decision making. But then, what on earth is the point of his being its Minister, presiding over NZPost, if he simply washes his hands of problems the electorate has with it?

New Zealand Post is legally obliged to exhibit a sense of social responsibility by considering the interests of the community it serves. Nobody believes for a moment that New Zealand Post is at all concerned about the interests of the community. And although Minister Brown was told that people would now have to travel possibly 20 kilometres into the city (40 kilometres for a return trip) simply to post a parcel, seemingly he doesn’t see this as a problem.

Meantime, oddly enough, two postal boxes have been retained outside the Four-Square shop at Atawhai, one for national and one for international letters. So New Zealand Post still has to daily visit this shop and clear the mailboxes outside.

So, I asked, as it was already visiting once daily (in fact often several times a day with deliveries made to the Four-Square shop itself) why couldn’t the person collecting the letters just pop inside the shop and collect the parcels, as used to be done. This would not involve New Zealand Post in any extra expense and probably about two or three minutes more of time.

The reply I got was sheer obfuscation with New Zealand Post claiming that this couldn’t be done because there were all sorts of procedures, processing and checks which had to be done for parcels on a separate system.

This simply isn’t true. The manager of this shop confirmed that all the procedures, the weighing of parcels, confirming postage costs, adding courier stickers and any other necessary checking are all done by staff inside the shop. All a driver would have to do is to go right inside the shop when collecting the mail, to collect the parcels as well, if there are any. They can then be quickly scanned into the system when the driver is back in the van. NZPost does this anyway when delivering parcels in the district – a scan of less than a minute to enter it into the system.

So indeed, as the mail is being collected from the postal boxes, the parcels could be collected from inside the store at the same time and Atawhai residents would not have to travel those extra kilometres into the city to try to find a possible parking spot not too far from the Paper Plus store, or the Hira residents to undertake the 40 kilometre round trip those from northeast Nelson now have to make, unnecessarily using fuel.

NZPost knows this but is not honest enough to now concede that yes, given the postal boxes need to be cleared daily, it could after all reverse its ill-thought refusal to collect the parcels as well. Brown could help here, but is apparently determined not to do so, in spite of the fact that he has been told that a petition signed by apparently 2000 nearby residents has asked him to do so. As Minister in charge of New Zealand Post he is apparently useless from the customers’ point of view, preferring to represent this bureaucracy rather than those asking for help.

This will undoubtedly cost National votes, which is a shame as Nelsonians have a promising candidate, Blair Cameron, hoping this year to win the electoral seat from Labour, and who very nearly won it last time around. Also asked for help, he in vain approached Brown on our behalf but got absolutely nowhere. Cameron may well still attract votes to represent us locally, given that he tried to help, but there is no doubt that National is going to deservedly lose List votes.

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There are some areas in which Simeon Brown has achieved real reforms, and these include his reminder that professions such as the Medical Council and others should not be pursuing ideological agendas which they seek to compel members to agree to but should be restricting themselves to their core responsibilities. However, those who have appealed for help with regard to NZPost’s refusal to collect parcels - while it is collecting mail at this Atawhai store - are not impressed by being thoroughly let down by the Minister.

That Simeon Brown strongly supports Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, with whom he is an apparent favourite, while childishly attacking National’s coalition partners, is also not a good sign. Brown has known for a long time that Luxon, for good reason, is not well regarded by the electorate and may well cost the Coalition the next election. This is an extraordinary situation. Given the last Labour government’s quite shocking performance, under Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins, its extravagant spending - well on the way to finally crippling the country - and its promoting of racial divisiveness, it is extraordinary that National is not well ahead of Labour so close to the next election. Luxon is very much part of the reason for this. Simeon must know this, so his continued support for a poorly performing Prime Minister who is endangering the success of his own party is ill-thought.

Our politicians are indeed a mixed bag and Simeon Brown’s poor showing with regard to NZPost, and with the racist demands made by Nelson Hospital on those looking for jobs, are areas where he should take control to represent New Zealanders, not these bureaucracies. He has made a poor choice and has gone down in the estimation of many.

He is by no means the only Minister to let down those asking for his help. So, it is little wonder that politicians are not rated highly in New Zealand with levels of trust low, so much so that one increasingly hears New Zealanders saying they don’t want to vote for any of them.

Time indeed to adopt the Swiss system, so that it is the Swiss people, not their politicians, who make the final decisions.

Time, too, to see, and support, www.100days.co.nz

Amy Brooke

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

In her book “The March of Folly”, historian Barbara Tuchman, trawling through history, pointed out that governments get most decisions wrong.

The implications of this are considerable. Yet few New Zealanders would argue with her contention, looking at the devastating consequences inflicted on this country as the result of years, indeed decades of our governments’ poor decision making, which hasn’t improved. A succession of egocentric, apparently intellectually challenged Prime Ministers run their parties as if they were CEOs, dominating all decision-making and making their MPs toe the line to avoid losing pay and position.

This simply couldn’t happen in Switzerland, the most successful democracy in the world. However, further along this will be illustrated so we can see how we, too, could actually control our politicians, instead of being virtually ruled by them.

As for Prime Ministers simply pulling rank on their MPs, I can recall so many instances of this happening. For example, in relation to Christopher Luxon alone, I well recall his and his deputy Nicola Willis’s condescending putdown of National Party MP Maureen Pugh when the latter stated that she was unconvinced that human activity contributed to climate change. Pugh was referring specifically to the claim that Cyclone Gabrielle had been because of this. She suggested that much of the ensuing devastation was due to poor tree management. Luxon, apparently as ill-informed on this issue as he is on so many others, declared that climate denial was unacceptable, saying there was no place for “climate deniers” or “minimalisers” in the caucus. Willis stated that Pugh had a lot of reading to do. Pugh then did a very quick turnaround, basically saying she now accepted they would need to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Apart from the sheer folly of New Zealanders being over-taxed and over-controlled in so many aspects of our life now in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions, when our government is well aware we are such a small country that nothing we can do can make any difference at all, apparently Willis has even more reading to do.

She seems unaware that over the last 12 months we have witnessed the collapse of the global consensus about climate change. What we are encountering is the demise of climate catastrophism. A paper published on the 7th of April by researchers responsible for creating the models that will underpin the United Nations next climate Bible, the 7th Assessment Report, has pronounced the last rites, pointing out that prognostications of doom have become implausible. Yet these have been underpinning the policies of most western governments including New Zealand, where we have not only been demonising CO2, but mis-spending accumulatively billions of dollars, and overestimating the greenhouse effects of methane.

Our governments have foolishly endorsed the impossible Net Zero by 2050 and signed us up to the prohibitively costly Paris Accord. China and India are making fools of us by using more and more coal, China 40% more than the rest of the world combined. India is going full throttle on coal to underpin its economic growth even though it is committed to reaching Net Zero, using well over a billion tonnes of coal annually.

As is pointed out elsewhere China works to achieve maximum competitive advantage by selling its green paraphernalia to the world, while boasting about its investment in renewable energy. However, China opened 50 coal-fired power stations last year compared with 25 in 2024. Several Asian countries have reverted to coal to generate electricity, with Australian coal producers one of the winners. In the Netherlands, another country run by deep green politicians for many years, the prospective closure of its massive gas field has been delayed several times.

It will be interesting to take a look in a future article at the damage some politicians in particular have done to this country. Arguably, former Prime Minister John Key would be among the top few. It was Key who committed us to the Paris Agreement which would involve buying carbon credits by paying other countries to reduce emissions. The original intent to purchase more than 200 million carbon credits could add up to $14 billion dollars. New Zealand First is now advocating retreating from the Paris Agreement.

The sheer absurdity of the carbon credits scheme has long been apparent to most New Zealanders, very many refusing to endorse our government’s slavish adherence to climate catastrophising, with reputable scientists pointing out that there is in fact no such thing as a scientific consensus that CO2 causes global warming. The Australian scientist, Ian Plimer, in a Quadrant article of December 2025, headed “Climate Lunacy and the Collapse of Scientific Integrity” is one among a number of world-renowned scientists who has exhaustively examined and refuted the arguments that we need to control our emissions, no matter the cost to us in doing so.

Plimer points out that atmospheric carbon dioxide is invisible, tasteless and odourless: it is not a pollutant - it is plant food and has been beneficial to life on earth for billions of years. He also points out that if all carbon dioxide were removed from the atmosphere, it would require the death of humans. New Zealand is still committed to Net Zero, reducing emissions from all sectors. However, it is gradually being abandoned by more and more other countries. Plimer also argues that no national energy policy can be underpinned by science that is contentious, fraudulent, misleading, deceptive, and demonstrably incorrect. Yet this is what our politicians are endorsing. However, even the gullible Greta Thunberg is now centre-staging her Palestinian activism instead.

The culpability of our mainstream media is no doubt one of the reasons why our politicians have remained so very ignorant about what is in reality a huge hoax that has been inflicted on us all – costing us dearly in terms of productivity, increased taxation in so many areas and overreaching government control.

Stuff, the New Zealand Herald and other mainstream newspaper editors have long stated that they have no intention of publishing any articles challenging the propaganda constantly inflicted on the public. So much for the debate needed to arrive at the truth of issues, and for the previously vaunted ”freedom of the press”. These media are deliberately practising censorship, with powerful financial interests apparently underpinning their stance. We would do well to refuse to subscribe to either of these and similar publications constantly asking for financial contributions.

Yet is that really enough to excuse our representatives from failing to do their own research or encouraging their staff to do so? To give her due credit, Nicola Willis appears to be changing her stance, showing a marked reluctance to embrace the prohibitively costly carbon credit nonsense. Our biggest liability in this area is apparently Climate Minister Simon Watts, by no means regarded as the sharpest tool in the box, who accompanied the Prime Minister on a trip to several Asian countries last year where memoranda of understanding were signed with Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines to pave the way for possible purchase of carbon credits in the future. Willis has not endorsed this.

Key himself was long regarded as dominating his cabinet, as was Labour leader Helen Clark when formerly Prime Minister. Long antagonistic to the United States, she allowed an astonishing succession of high-ranking Chinese military personnel to be shown around our military bases. It was Clark, too, who was responsible for dismantling the combat wing of our Air Force, claiming what was palpably untrue, even at the time, that we lived “in an incredibly benign strategic environment”, which enabled defence cuts to be made. And yet, one of the three main obligations of government is the defence of the realm.

As we examine the overbearing ways in which our Prime Ministers impose their rule on the members of parliament, we see how badly electoral reform is needed, genuine electoral reform, not mere tinkering with the system. Luxon’s practice of presiding over the National Party as if he were its CEO was also obvious when pro-life National MP, Simon O’Connor, celebrated the US Supreme Court’s Roe V Wade decision and posted “Today is a good day” on his Facebook site, with a pro-life comment. Luxon told him to take it down.

What happens to so many MPs’ courage? O’Connor later wrongly said he had not been gagged. His excuse for not standing up to Luxon was that he had taken it down because it had sown dissent, with some finding it hurtful.

Poor dears.

Even worse, an apparent favourite of Luxon’s, pro-life Simeon Brown, also apologised for supporting O’Connor in a post and removed his support! Many New Zealanders would find their actions spineless, particularly given that others like pro-abortion, deputy Prime Minister Nicola Willis said she was “gutted for America”, and Jacinda Ardern and ACT leader David Seymour showed no hesitation in voicing their disapproval of the Supreme Court’s decision.

It was Ardern, as Prime Minister, presiding over the worst and most incompetent government we have ever had, who had abortion - the deliberate killing of a defenceless, unborn boy or girl child - removed from legislation decriminalising abortion so that it would now be treated merely as a health issue. It is far from that – particularly for a living, pre-born child. And for Ardern and David Seymour, among others, to vote for a baby being aborted right up to the time of birth, and also for medical care and comfort to be withheld from such a child who then dies, probably crying its way out of this world, is inexcusable.

Apart from our overbearing Prime Ministers, who else behind the scenes is actually dominating the decision making in this country? Immigration minister Erica Stanford is far from pleased at finding that public service officials within the office of Business, Immigration and Employment (MBIE) have misled her, and basically parliament, using creative accounting to hide the failure of a $33 million biometric technology project over seven years. Reportedly this project had cycled through a dozen project managers who brushed aside warnings that it wouldn’t deliver and gave the minister misleading advice about the project.

I was also interested to receive a typically unhelpful response when I contacted Minister Simeon Brown in relation to New Zealand Post’s recent closing of a well-located local post office. This closure requires residents now to have to travel 20 kilometres into Nelson city itself to try to find a park in the main street - where parking is often impossible - to use a local bookstore instead and perhaps carry a heavy parcel some distance. Petitions signed by approximately 2000 local residents, pointing out the distance they now have to travel, using precious fuel, has simply been ignored by NZ Post’s bureaucracy. And Brown. As he is the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, presiding over New Zealand Post, he could be expected to check with them why they are misleading the public by promising that nobody would have to go more than 5K to the nearest post office, which is quite untrue.

Brown’s reply was basically a brush-off, including the statement that he had made his expectations clear to New Zealand Post that it should operate a reliable and customer focused business - which it is far from doing in other areas as well. However, what I found particularly interesting when I got back to Simeon Brown’s office to emphasise how unsatisfactory this situation was, is that I received an unsigned letter from his office stating that the writer had made note of my e-mail below and passed it on to the team for their consideration.

I replied, pointing out that I was not asking the ministerial team to take my e-mail into consideration - I was specifically asking Simeon Brown himself to read it, saying I wanted to ensure he did. I pointed out that when the public send an e-mail to an MP or minister, they’re not sending it to a team – they’re sending it to this particular person. I also pointed out that the writer should be well aware that we don’t elect a ministerial team to parliament to represent our interests - we send MPs as our representatives.

I have had no reply. But I’m reminded of a friend who was an MP contacting me late at night to say he hadn’t heard from me for many months in relation to the issues of the day. This was interesting because I was writing a regular, topical column and had included him in my mailouts. They were obviously not getting to him. This particular one very probably had because I sent it late at night when his office staff would not be available to intercept it, and he himself had checked his email.

And then there is the current finding that bureaucrats can withhold important reports from local councillors and mayors elected by the public.

So who is running the country? And what about the changes being made to proposals after they have already passed from the select committee – such as the recent sneaky attempt to control home-schooling parents – possibly requiring them to adopt the state curricula? The home-schooled syllabus and children with whom I have been involved are academically streets ahead of our children in state schools. This proposal had to be abandoned, given the justifiable public outcry.

With MPs very probably getting hundreds of emails a day, it’s up to staff to report back to them on the issues raised. Probably a much better way of making your views known is to ring Parliament - 04 817 9999 - asking to be put through to the required office, and then state your concerns. Unfortunately, by far the majority of ministers and MPs have no one answering the phone, as they should, so one may have to leave a message, asking that it be passed on to that representative.

Is all this good enough for New Zealanders? Of course not. And what we need is genuine electoral reform. Given that this is the case, we should be looking for the country regarded as the most successful democracy in the world, and of course this is Switzerland, which practises direct democracy.

The Swiss Federal Palace, Bern

Swiss members of their parliament are encouraged to hold down day jobs in the trades or professions or elsewhere. Their parliament meets only four times a year, each session lasting only three weeks. And even given double the population of New Zealand, there are only seven members in the Swiss cabinet. Most importantly, unlike the way our overbearing leaders like Christopher Luxon, John Key, Jacinda Ardern, Helen Clark and so on do so, the President of Switzerland does not dominate the cabinet – he or she is regarded as simply primus inter pares – first among equals - and must step down after one year.

Genuine electoral reform in New Zealand should embrace this concept - that an entrenched leader does not dominate our cabinet, but must step down after one year. Moreover, we have twenty ministers in cabinet, as well as some from outside - in contrast to the merely seven in the Swiss cabinet, where it is usually the finance minister who steps up to being the president after a year. The seven ministers’ portfolios embrace the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Home Affairs, the Minister of Justice and Police, and so on. Basically they serve as the collective head of the Swiss government operating as a combined cabinet in a collective presidency. Given the very obvious advantages of such an arrangement, why do we allow strong-minded Prime Ministers such as we have had in recent years to dig in and virtually rule the country, according to their own agenda – like Key’s attempt to change our flag?

Genuine electoral reform cannot do better than the Swiss system where the people regularly vote on laws and referendums and have the power to challenge legislation, or proposed constitutional amendments. In contrast, New Zealand, given our MPs’ pusillanimity, has seen to it over the years that although all New Zealanders are supposed to be equal, those with even a smidgen of Maori genetic inheritance are regarded as more equal to all other New Zealanders. i.e. given special funding, rights and privileges.

Although there are four distinctly separate ethnic groups in Switzerland, this country does not grant special rights to any group based on racist grounds. In fact, Swiss law operates on the principle of equal treatment within its federal constitution. Given that the Treaty of Waitangi intended to do the same thing - grant equal rights and responsibilities to all New Zealanders - it is at the feet of our government that can be laid the blame for this principle of equality having been totally disregarded over the years to favour those of even minimal, part-Maori descent - an unpardonable shame on our country.

However, the most important provision for the Swiss people fought for is the Facultative Referendum. As the ultimate decision-makers in the Swiss Federal Assembly, Swiss citizens retain the right to challenge any parliamentary law in a public ballot - if they can gain 50,000 signatures. As we have half the population of Switzerland, about 25,000 signatures would be enough in this country to compel legislation to sit and wait for 100 days. People can then accept or decline it, and the decision of the Swiss people is final.

For New Zealanders to adopt the 100 days Swiss system - so that we can stop the constant flow of legislation with which we do not agree - and about which we are not consulted - would be enough to ensure very effective electoral reform in this country. Add to this the provision that the Prime Minister can hold office for one year only and then has to step down, and the country would be transformed.

Please access and support the proposal as laid out in www.100days.co.nz. All we need is a tipping point of New Zealanders to support this initiative - to let others know and encourage them to support it - and we would win back this country.

New Zealanders need to tell their MPs that we want them to back the 100 Days…

To have a philanthropist on board with enough vision to make the very real possibilities of the 100 Days more widely known would be an enormous help. A backer with vision enough to spread the word would hasten the day.

The tools to reclaim this country already exist. What’s missing is the will to use them. It is high time to do so, for we are losing so much.

© Amy Brooke.

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

Isn’t Te Reo basically a scam? Why are individuals fraudulently claiming to be Maori when they’re predominantly not Maori at all? And why endorsing UNDRIP is a disgrace.

Equally disgraceful in this present climate of cultural bullying is what has just happened to a first-year law student at the University of Canterbury - and to her companions. She had worked hard to achieve a good result but was totally floored when she was asked to list in order the top four courts in New Zealand - the District Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

No problem, one might think. The problem is that the courts were not listed by their English names, but by invented te reo names.

What an utter disgrace, especially since we know that none of the te reo names are even authentic Maori. They are spurious names - as is by far the language now called te reo, bearing minimal relationship to the original Maori language, yet increasingly labelled as Maori - when it is nothing of the sort. For example, if you check the te reo definition for the District Court, you’ll find Te Koti a Rohe. But Maori had no District Court!

Moreover, this whole tower of lies comes crashing down when the definition also states that the court system utilises te reo to make the justice system more accessible. This is palpably untrue. It would be very hard to find any part-Maori individual in New Zealand who cannot speak English, yet apparently only around 4% of New Zealanders can understand or speak te reo with any degree of fluency. How on earth can describing the court system in te reo make it more accessible to New Zealanders? It obviously cannot. But the cultural bullying and the lies simply pile up.

Equally challenging is that Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has instructed conservation staff to use te reo everywhere and anywhere in their correspondence. Why, when he must know very well that 96% of citizens will not understand it?

It is very much part of the moral decline of our successive governments that New Zealand taxpayers have been forced to pay accumulatively billions of dollars in recent years to individuals and iwi – (pseudo-tribes) - which are in reality wealthy corporations claiming to be Maori. In many cases, these continual payouts have been because of supposed race-based need. Yet the real criteria should always be genuine, individual need, rather than a genetic inheritance which in many cases is now basically a farcical claim.

It is well past time we had a legal definition of who is genuinely Maori, based on scientific evidence.

It’s time our cowardly governments faced up to this, instead of constantly crumbling in the face of activist pressure and cultural bullying by individuals who are gaming the system. Predominantly of European or Eurasian descent, in many cases they are themselves extremely wealthy, while claiming disadvantage on racial grounds - or academics who feel they are special and somehow superior - because of one or more Maori ancestor.

It is more than interesting, for example, that the DNA results for prominent, wealthy activist Willie Jackson, foremost in campaigning as Maori, shows him to have as little as 2.04% Oceania Maori. His much more predominant genetic inheritance has him at 33.7% East Asian; 25% Ashkenazi (German) Jew; and 18% European (substantially Welsh).

Moreover, the DNA results for many of those most prominently claiming to be Maori may well be very similar. We already know that some of the most prominent “Maori” activists have as little as 1/16th or even less genetic inheritance.

So why are we being conned into recognising as Maori individuals who are basically nothing of the sort, but who claim special privileges, rights and prior consultation by government and other bodies - along with ongoing extra funding? Why are they given preferential treatment in areas like health and education?

Of course, most part-Maori are not involved in these rorts, with many indignant - even angry - that while they get on with earning a living for their families, like all other New Zealanders, the government constantly kowtows to fanatical activists claiming disadvantage by supposedly being Māori – and who are now actually pushing for co-governance of this country.

They have also heavily promoted te reo, being inflicted on the country through our media - together with the activist substitution of the inauthentic Aotearoa for New Zealand.

Government related organisations have connived at this. New Zealanders did not give the Ministry of Internal Affairs permission to suddenly put Aotearoa on New Zealand passports. When I enquired how this happened without consultation with the country as a whole, I was told that iwi were consulted. So, too, with the Reserve Bank, without our consultation putting Aotearoa on our paper currency.

If you google the words te reo, you are told that te reo is the indigenous, Eastern Polynesian language of the Maori people of New Zealand. There are two lies right there – one is the implication that Maori were indigenous to New Zealand, a false claim which keeps being repeated.

For this we can very much blame the former National Party Prime Minister John Key, who without letting anybody know, dispatched the then Maori Minister Pita Sharples to New York to sign UNDRIP, the United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The mainstream media have culpably failed to ask Key to explain why he undertook such a surreptitious, sneaky act without even consulting New Zealanders – which simply couldn’t happen in a country like Switzerland, where international treaties cannot be signed without the consent of the people.

Key’s actions now have very unpalatable consequences for New Zealanders. And why did he not want anyone to know?

Moreover, when, in recent decades, have our successive governments bothered to consult New Zealanders about the highly damaging policies they have been inflicting on us? It is interesting that Key was also keen to change our flag, reportedly so that the Union Jack would no longer feature on a new flag. A multimillionaire, John Key is also one of the seven former Prime Ministers for whom New Zealanders are compelled to pay ongoing annuities of up to $64,000 each a year – plus other perks – depending how long they have served.

But why? Considering the damage that many would consider most of these seven have inflicted on this country - and their personal wealth – the question inevitably arises: with so many New Zealanders finding it very hard to make ends meet, why are these handouts to wealthy former politicians even being given? How many New Zealanders are happy about being taxed for this extraordinary provision? And why has it been kept so little known?

Only John Key himself can explain why he so deviously undertook to make sure that nobody knew what he was doing by sending Sharples to the UN. So much for our being a democracy. He still has to explain why he signed such a declaration when New Zealand has no indigenous people in the true meaning of the word. Maori, like our colonial ancestors, came from other countries, with various tribes even proudly boasting that they know the names of the canoes in which their forebears came. They were simply prior immigrants.

I am reminded here of the former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, telling a cheering crowd on the 1988 Australian Bicentenary that “today there is no hierarchy of descent, and must be no privileged descent.” Tell that to our Prime Ministers.

Moreover, on the basis of New Zealand having signed up to this fraudulent nonsense of our so-called indigenous people, Jacinda Ardern’s government promoted dissent by pushing for iwi to achieve co-governance of this country. We would no longer be a democracy, inasmuch as we still are, which is more than debatable, but become further divided on racist grounds. The present, National-led coalition is already accommodating co-government in areas where iwi are, as usual, bullying the government, which, also as usual, is giving way to racist-based pressure.

Following what many regard as Key’s extraordinary behaviour, the signing of this declaration formed the basis of the Ardern government’s 2021 ministerial He Puapua report, which aimed to challenge political and constitutional norms in New Zealand - basically to undermine democracy by giving those with some Maori ancestry a greater say than others in both government and local council’s decisions. The report aimed for full implementation of UNDRIP by 2040.

New Zealanders are increasingly inclined to wonder about the ideological agenda underpinning of some of our politicians’ actions. And although the National Party repudiated UNDRIP, the current controversial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to be signed by our and the Indian government, now includes a commitment to UNDRIP – an utterly superfluous, deeply divisive undertaking to which National and the ACT parties are committing themselves – challenged by New Zealand First.

This will have extraordinary constitutional consequences, an all-too-powerful tool in the hands of those radicalised part-Maori activists (with the help of the inexcusably partisan Waitangi Tribunal - well overdue to be abolished) pushing for a basically separate Maori government. The pusillanimity of this present government in gradually giving way to grant completely unwarranted co-governance of some of the country’s waterways, of Mt Egmont - re-named Taranaki and inexplicably granted legal personhood together with the Waikato river and Urewera forest - is a pretty good indication of the lack of moral courage shown by our MPs in the face of continual aggressive pressure from well-funded iwi. Moreover, these iwi, on the basis of their claims to be mainly charitable organisations, are commonly exempt from the standard taxation other organisations pay, which many regard as another great con.

There is also very strong evidence that Ngai Tahu, formerly known as the white tribe because of issues relating to their ancestry - and perhaps the most powerful of these quasi-tribes - are now pushing to gain formal control and management of the South Island waterways through the courts. Their supposed third and final, multi-million-dollar settlement obtained in the 90s underpins the tribe’s wealth - a settlement which has been described as a swindle, with plenty of evidence showing Ngai Tahu at times simply lied, or fabricated and distorted historical happenings.

What many found utterly inexplicable is that their lawyer, later National Party List MP Chris Finlayson, obtained for them the lucrative, sole rights to whale-watching at Kaikoura, and to the South Island’s greenstone – although this tribe was never in a position to hunt whales, and greenstone was traded long before Ngai Tahu arrived in the South Island.

Their win was basically assisted by Crown lawyers who were meant to examine the tribe’s claims but later admitted that they had no-one historically competent to examine the Ngai Tahu assertions and therefore relied upon what Ngai Tahu told them. It is not the first time this country has been let down by Crown lawyers. Given that this was the case, lawyer Chris Finlayson’s boasting that he had defeated the Crown lawyers seems little to crow about.

Moreover, the Maori Affairs Select Committee at the time, which had rejected a previous Ngai Tahu claim, was told to ignore the approximate 400 submissions (many of which challenged Ngai Tahu’s assertions) on the basis that the settlement had already been signed – although procedurally it should not have been, by the then Prime Minister, Jim Bolger.

Many would argue that Ngai Tahu have already had far too much influence on decision-making, and their current push to move past consultation to partnership with the Crown as claimed treaty partners, is completely unacceptable. This myth of a treaty partnership was pushed by Jacinda Ardern herself, whereas in fact, the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi basically established that all New Zealanders, including Maoris, had the same rights and protection as British subjects. There never was and could not legally be any suggestion that the Crown could enter into a partnership with various disparate tribes scattered throughout the country.

However, it is upon this canard that the push for co-governance has arisen. The present coalition government, repudiating this claim before the last election, has nevertheless now endorsed co-governance in various areas. This treaty partnership has been pushed into so many areas of our life that school boards until now had been compelled to act according to the principles of the Treaty – which is sheer nonsense. With this obligation now removed, so very left-wing and radicalised are the teachers’ unions that many boards have insisted on retaining this nebulous activist provision, and Labour have stated that they are going to re-insert this obligation if they win the next election.

Ngai Tahu, in fact, are always trying to rob the taxpayers of accumulatively more millions, and in the eyes of many are having to basically be bribed to agree to certain developments taking place, as well as interfering in the affairs of both Otago and Canterbury Universities. Their push for more and more advantages has them increasingly known as a rogue tribe whose hierarchy are apparently not predominantly Maori at all.

It is likely due to Ngai Tahu’s influence that applicants to Otago Medical School in Dunedin get prior admission if they have any genetic Maori or Pacific Island inheritance - ahead of others, irrespective of merit. Many will remember the case of a father who took the university to court because his hard-working son obtained over 90% in the entrance examination but was denied admission because others who had not done nearly as well had the required racial background. This provision still applies, in spite of the fact that the United States Supreme Court now has shut the door on race-conscious admissions to American universities, which means that race can no longer be a factor in college admissions. Applicants must now be evaluated only on their qualifications. It is to this country’s shame that this invidious practice has been allowed to continue.

So much has gone wrong with a country which once far more resembled a democracy, and the trajectory will continue if the Labour party gets back into power. The Ardern-Hipkins government caused so much damage that it is a severe indictment on the National Party that it is not much further ahead in the polling. So understandably low is Christopher Luxon’s personal rating that is costing the National Party - which apparently would rather risk losing the election than listen to what the country is saying.

When making an untrue claim about te reo being the original language of the Maori people, the Google site, apparently given the opportunity to make an anti-colonial accusation, further adds that the Maori language was banned in schools as a result of colonisation – which is also utterly untrue. I recall my father’s disappointment, when, in charge of what was then known as a native school on the east coast of the South Island, he was asked by the local Maori chief to no longer allow the Maori language to be taught or used in school.

The reason given was that a delegation of high-ranking Maoris had gone to parliament to make this request on the basis that if Maori children were not made to learn English properly, alongside the European children, they would not achieve the same level of competence. When my father asked in some concern who would then teach the Maori children their own language, he was told that the parents would teach it at home. That they did not do so has cost today’s New Zealanders hundreds, if not billions, of dollars promoting what is no longer genuine Maori at all.

I remember telling this to Willie Jackson – that it was Maori elders themselves who petitioned parliament to have spoken Maori forbidden in schools when he was invited as a speaker to our Summer Sounds Symposium (www.summersounds.co.nz) - and intent on blaming everybody else for the language being banned. He didn’t seem particularly keen to hear this. And when another fine speaker gave a very good account of the enormous benefits of colonialisation which saved Maoris from incessant and violent tribal warfare, and the abhorrent practice of cannibalism, as well as slavery, I recalled that Jackson made it difficult to hear the speaker because he himself kept continually and noisily turning the pages of material he was holding.

Te reo is in fact overwhelmingly a made-up language, fraudulently claimed to be Maori, a fabricated academic attempt to provide the so-called equivalents for the 170,000 words commonly used in English. Genuine Maori language has about 2000 words.

So what is actually happening is that 98% of te reo – (setting the 2000 genuine Maori words against the 170,000 which must be now produced as supposed “Maori “) is not Maori at all. And yet it is being inflicted at an accumulated cost of hundreds of millions of dollars on training teachers in te reo, on children in our schools and promoting it in the media. A few simple examples show how absurd are the supposed Maori equivalents for our words and phrases. For example, the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Inland Revenue Department (apparently known as Te Tara Taake by today’s part-Maori ancestors), first-class airfare to Dubai, public hospitals, Accident and Emergency Parking. And, to the eternal shame of St John’s, this organisation is now calling itself Hato Hone – although Maori had no word for saint and no word for John. No wonder people are withdrawing their financial contributions to this organisation.

The simple dishonesty of all this nonsense is breathtaking - the farcical, so-called Maori equivalents of, say, coffee…apparently known as kawha by the original Maori – although they didn’t know coffee… peanut butter, jam, vegemite, sandwich, cocoa, lemonade…and the many thousands of items we use or refer to in our everyday life of which Maori had no knowledge, but which academics have invented, and which Maori activists are trying to compel the country to embrace. The equally shameful thing is that our Members of Parliament are conniving at this - and that the government is acquiescing to this rort that sees so many millions of dollars spent which are badly needed elsewhere.

This country is no longer at a crossroads – it has progressed too far from maintaining the standards and principles which a genuine democracy should be upholding. We do not have government by the people, for the people. We are not being genuinely consulted at all with regard to the important issues of the day. We are being ruled by a parliamentary oligarchy now in virtual partnership with influential part-Maori academics and powerful iwi who have used their wealth to buy influence in our universities and other important institutions.

For example, it is an added disgrace that at the University of Otago, applications for research grants in various subjects also have to be approved by Ngai Tahu representatives who decide who takes priority. To the annoyance of many of the alumni, this university has now given itself a te reo name as well, although, needless to say, Maori did not have any universities. The University of Auckland, too, has brought itself into disgrace by the various racist activities in which it has engaged.

And now Ngai Tahu are at it again, arguing that their third full and final settlement should be renegotiated, because of major conservation reforms. Moreover, according to the head of Santana Minerals, Peter Cook, Ngai Tahu have reportedly sought $180 million dollars to approve the open cast mines in Central Otago, apparently for damage to their mana (their pride, sense of prestige) among other issues, as well as requesting a substantial investment be granted to them.

The sheer gall of it all is extraordinary – the mines are predominantly on private land – nothing to do with this quasi-tribe - but Ngai Tahu are claiming wide-ranging cultural and environmental concerns if these mines go ahead. But somehow, granting $180 million would make it all come right – stand over tactics?

Because of the sheer moral cowardice of so many of our politicians and bureaucrats, we have as a country long been bending the knee, practising the politics of tribalism, with too few objecting in case they should be accused of being racist. Yet our forebears fought for our democracy – for all to have equal rights so that nobody should be more special than anybody else.

Our parliamentarians and city councils who now allow part-Maori preferential seats and voting rights on the basis of race – including those not even voted onto councils – should be ashamed of themselves. They have succumbed to being bullied in order to avoid the highly unpleasant, aggressive treatment handed out to those brave enough to stand up to this bullying, inflicted to deter others. We have already seen the disgraceful behaviour of members of the Maori Party in Parliament performing aggressive hakas, advancing confrontationally on opposition members and pointing fingers as if with a gun when meeting opposition to their agenda.

This brings us to two other very important issues.

First, it is no wonder that we have become an impoverished country, unable to afford even medications for treatment such as cancer which are freely available overseas and which cause some New Zealanders to fly to Australia, as they are not available here. A shortage of money for health care; for more facilities for those with mental health problems; to make sure that our public hospitals are properly staffed; and that we have sufficient teachers who are actually competent in the subjects they are supposed to be able to teach can all be attributed to the billions of dollars now paid to compensate part-Maori individuals for claimed wrongs to their ancestors – some genuine, some fraudulent, in the past. However, those wronged are long gone, and those constantly forced to pay more and more compensation were not responsible for these. Many question the justice in this.

In other words, a major reason for this downgrading of so many of our facilities is because so many billions have been poured into areas supposedly to benefit Maori only, or rather, those who are part-Maori. The list is extensive. For example, in the 2024 budget, the coalition government committed $48.7 million over three years, funded until 2026, to support kapa haka (Maori festivals incorporating songs and actions) including regional competitions and the national festival structure. However, when Te Pae Kahurangi haka was led by the former president of the Maori Party, it was perceived to be racist, misogynistic, and derogatory, targeted at an individual politician.

What is it all for? $48.7 million is a hefty amount to take from New Zealanders’ pockets for basically social functions, when added to the billions of dollars being paid out to various Maori groups and organisations over the years. But why? With the Maori economy worth about $126 billion, celebrations for part-Māori should not be paid for by the taxpayer.

Why is money being diverted from areas which are well and truly impoverished in this country to bestow it upon individuals claiming to be Maori or for Maori causes? For example, the cost to the country of the destructive Jacinda Ardern’s invention of Matariki Day as a holiday was estimated to between $377 and $448 million dollars. Little wonder New Zealand’s levels of productivity are so low. Little wonder we cannot afford so much that other countries take for granted.

Why are those self-identifying as Maori - despite what other genetic inheritances may be dominant - being prioritised for special treatment within our health system? Our governments need to face up to the fact that there are no longer any Maori as a separate ethnic grouping. So successful was intermarriage in this country that the one remaining woman in the country who claims she is Maori, because of her high DNA, still has European ancestry. In fact, well-represented among those most loudly claiming disadvantage because they are part-Maori are those (like Willie Jackson) who have as little as 1/8 or 1/16 or even less Maori genetic inheritance. Yet until the mid-70s, logically enough, individuals had to be at least 50% Maori to be considered Maori. If not, it was acknowledged that one was largely European or Euro-Asian, or whatever applied.

It was a well-planned move by an activist, part-Maori MP to get this definition removed. However, to those pointing out that individuals with below 50% Maori genetic inheritance are not predominantly Maori at all comes the nonsensical reply that you are Maori if you feel Maori …or that it is not “the blood quantum” which matters, but “a living thread”. Both are basically dishonest claims: Wishful thinking or jargon-ridden replies simply don’t change facts. And it takes a certain arrogance to regard oneself as deserving special treatment, because one has some Maori ancestry.

Many, including many fine part-Maori who have worked hard to achieve a great deal in the professions and trades, think it is basically a disgrace that anyone self-identifying as Maori can receive special rights, privileges, scholarships, grants and funding on the basis of this claim. Moreover, many part-Maori also do not favour the claims of activists that meetings and addresses should be preceded by te reo greetings, prayers, and incantations – as is now the case. Nor that activist judges should be virtually rewriting our laws to incorporate the nebulous concept of tikanga, overriding common law to do so.

It is high time that our governments woke up to the fact that te reo is basically a scam – a costly farce. Why have they allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on inventing and promoting this language, far removed from the genuine Maori language? We need to emphasize this: te reo is not the Maori language and there is no possible excuse for inflicting it upon schools, teachers and the country at large.

It is incontrovertible that te reo is almost completely inauthentic. It is spoken nowhere else in the world, for good reason. To keep promoting it by saying we must preserve the Maori language is basically a con. It is simply the truth that it bears very little resemblance to that original Maori language with its understandably very limited vocabulary, all that was needed in a restricted environment where a basically stone-age people who had not invented the wheel, or even bows and arrows, and relied largely on woven plant fibres to clothe themselves in winter. And understandably, needing to survive, far from being environmentally concerned (as is now claimed) Maoris hunted moas, burning forests to do so, as well as hunting the giant Haast eagles, and some native birds and seabirds, to extinction.

New Zealand children in school are constantly told a highly sanitised version of the pre-European occupation of this country with our colonists demonised, when in fact it was the arrival of the colonists that put a stop to internecine warfare - to the overwhelming advantage of the then resident Maoris. But considering the cost to this country of the billions of dollars constantly showered on those with any genetic inheritance of Maori, and the fact that the country has been considerably impoverished by doing so - our productivity lessened and money diverted on racist grounds from where it is badly needed (as with the $10 million that Shane Jones recently bestowed on the Ratana people as a gift from taxpayers) it is high time all this was challenged.

Although John Key hastened to endorse UNDRIP, our governments have been very slow in waking up to the fact that the United Nations Organisation is implacably opposed to the democratic West. Recently, outrage has been expressed by the independent Geneva based, non-government organisation UN Watch, that monitors the United Nations. It has called upon Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and other democracies to explain why they joined in the election of serial abusers of human rights to key bodies at the United Nations.

For example, the UN has nominated the Islamic Republic of Iran to a committee which shapes policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament and terrorism practices. China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia and Sudan have also been elected to an influential committee of NGOs which oversee the accreditation and UN access of thousands of human rights and civil society groups which enjoy consultative status with the UN. Only the US has stated that these countries are unfit to do so. As UN Watch points out, by their cynical actions these Western countries have betrayed their own human rights principles, severely undermining the rule-based international order they claim to support - as with our former left-wing Prime Minister Helen Clark, railing against the important US attack against Iran to prevent it developing a nuclear arsenal.

So why have our governments been so keen to endorse UNDRIP, launched by the UN – a move largely responsible for the government’s promotion of te reo – which was never even the language of Maori- who were not even indigenous to this country?

Isn’t it time to challenge the basically neo-Marxist Ministry of Education, which has worked so indefatigably for so long to dumb down the quality of education in this country?

Why is it insisting that children and teachers learn this spurious language at the cost now of multimillions of dollars – instead of languages which would be really useful to them, such as Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, even Latin - which has far more relevance as it is the language of taxonomy, of science, or medicine - and it is from Roman Law that our own legal system is derived. Five of the world’s languages are directly derived from Latin - French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian - which makes it much easier to learn them later - and many English words have a Latin origin. But our destructive Ministry of Education has done its best to ensure that as far as possible New Zealand children do not have the chance to learn the subject I found more valuable than any other in my schooling.

Moreover, many New Zealanders are becoming increasingly irritated about emails written to them with te reo greetings and containing words which are actually incomprehensible to the 96% of the country which does not understand, nor wish to learn, this language.

Some correspondents are downright rude, such as InternetNZ. When I recently received a communication from them incorporating te reo words I politely wrote back and said that as I was not Maori, I would prefer them to use English, the language of the majority of the population when writing to me. I had no idea what some of their te reo words meant – as, for example, being told to korero them to make contact. Even the police are now inserting te reo words which are basically gibberish to so many into their communications.

The reply I got from Internet NZ/Ipuranga - (apparently the Maori word used two or more centuries ago when referring to the Internet) - was that “InternetNZ /Ipuranga Aotearoa will not be changing our policy on the use of reo Maori. All complaints about the use of re Maori will be disregarded by staff”.

How’s that for a courteous reply?

It’s about time that New Zealanders who are fed up with this cultural bullying start to boycott institutions, companies and firms which use the word Aotearoa instead of New Zealand. This applies to our television channels whose presenters constantly greet us in te reo, also referring to our country as Aotearoa. So do Stuff and the New Zealand Herald, who do not deserve our financial support but are constantly looking for it. Telling them why you will not give it, nor watch their news channels is a very good idea. If we do not fight back, we will get only what we deserve.

Very few New Zealanders think that the government genuinely knows what it is doing in relation to issues of the day. Such as its foolish endorsement – against all the evidence, that CO2 causes global warming. It is acknowledged that even if this were the case, the cost that New Zealanders are being forced to pay is damaging us hugely in economic terms and could not possibly make any difference at all to the global warming scenario – small as we are as a country. Yet Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon behaved superciliously to the one National Party MP that raised this issue.

In other words, in so many areas, our government has lost its way - with things getting worse, not better.

Nor are they going to improve while we are still virtually ruled by successive governments which, behind the scenes have lobbyists pressuring governments and providing considerable financial handouts to get what they want.

There’s only one possible but very realistic way which we New Zealanders can claim the achievable right to decide the directions of this country, and that is to adopt what the clever Swiss people fought for and won – so that our governments can no longer run with the bit between their teeth and constantly pass laws detrimental to the interests of the country.

It is detailed on the website www.100days.co.nz.

It is worth checking out, especially today when people are understandably calling out for genuine electoral reform.

What it would ensure is that any legislation passed by Parliament has to sit for 100 days to allow New Zealanders themselves to either endorse it, or say no.

Check it out for yourselves. It is very doable, given a tipping point of New Zealanders to endorse it. A helpful philanthropist willing to donate make its possibilities more widely known would be a great asset.

If you are one or know one - and would like to help make it more widely known, you would be doing your fellow citizens a great favour.

Please help where you can by fighting back - even by supporting this Substack or sharing it to make it more widely known.

© Amy Brooke

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

A quick look ahead at the year’s Rainbow Events calendar shows pride festivals featured every month, from January to December, with events slotted in to celebrate individuals’ anti-heterosexual inclinations, such as homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pansexual, same sex marriages - an extraordinary variety of departures from what most people would regard as normalcy – the attraction between a man and woman which advances the human race.

And although many thousands were estimated to have attended the Auckland Rainbow Pride Parade some time back, this was by no means a sign of support for what some viewed as basically an attack on traditional family values. Have we really reached the stage where drag queens - in garish dresses and exaggerated, dramatized makeup with over-sized breasts, deep cleavage and piled-up hairdos - can lampoon women without this being considered offensive? Are concerned parents not supposed to mind that what many regard as basically exhibitionists are now freely invited to read to children in libraries, disturbing and confusing many? Is this mockery of women really just all good fun? And do Hero Parades really feature heroes?

It is possible that many New Zealanders will wonder why David Seymour and Chris Bishop led contingents from the ACT and National parties, together with a rainbow-decorated police car spearheading the New Zealand Police contingent, all in support of this Pride Parade. Police officers hoisting the Progress Pride flag, joined by representatives from Fonterra, Foodstuffs Woolworths, the Burnett Foundation, Fire and Emergency services, and even, sadly, Scouts Aotearoa. Yet as it basically celebrates sexual behaviour contrary to what nature intended - the heterosexual union between a man and a woman intended, where possible, to produce the children which ensures society’s survival - it seems reasonable for puzzled people to ask what is happening to us as a country? If there was a similar parade held to celebrate the Christian beliefs underpinning our society, would the police, these MPs and all these firms be so keen to march in support of our valuable heritage? Is it time to ask what is happening to us as a society and whether this a good thing – reasonable questions, most would agree.

At any rate, for some obscure reason, physical relationships between members of the same sex which traditionally - and in many countries worldwide – have been and are frowned upon, even punished, have been so cleverly media-promoted in the West that apparently they now appear to be regarded as a source of great pride, so that we have got to the stage where we have such marches, recently even called Hero Parades.

No explanation is actually given as to why individuals wedded to what many regard as deviant activities should have these celebrated as heroic, or a source of excessive pride. In fact, those puzzledly asking how such a situation could have arisen in a country founded upon and underpinned by Christian values – homosexuality is explicitly condemned in the Bible – would no doubt be immediately accused of homophobia - or promoting hate speech. Such pejorative accusations are always a useful weapon deployed to intimidate those raising genuine concerns.

It is certainly true that until comparatively recently, as epitomised in the well-publicised trial of Oscar Wilde, those caught engaged in a homosexual act were treated cruelly. So today, very probably the majority of people throughout the West, mindful of the lack of tolerance so long shown towards those faced with same sex attraction - in some cases causing the individuals concerned bewilderment and shame - are rightly anxious to ensure this cruelty never happens again.

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In countries such as Japan, homosexual marriage is banned, and same sex acts are illegal in over 60 countries, with penalties ranging from imprisonment to the death penalty. The West, of course, cannot condone this. Extending tolerance to those adults whose consensual practices we may not approve of may well be regarded as axiomatic. However, when behaviour challenging our social and moral mores comes to be apparently regarded as something to be especially proud of, then this is another issue entirely. We have gone past minding our own business to promoting what is as now presented as somehow superior – hence these Pride Marches and the Hero Parades through towns and cities.

What concerns many parents is the promotion of homosexual behaviour in schools with, for example, School Pride Week in June, Aotearoa (the radicalised term Aotearoa is in itself a giveaway) aimed at supporting Rainbow (LGBTQIA etc ) individuals, staff and students, with Pride Banners flown and specific activities involved. Many would regard such concern as reasonable. This attempt to both propagandise and recruit defenceless young children may well be regarded as scandalous by those who question whether we have, in the West, lost our moral compass. It masquerades, of course, as promoting “diversity “- that weasel word so usefully used by those attacking traditional values. It is no wonder that some parents keep their children at home during this particular week.

The tolerance New Zealanders have as a matter of course long extended towards those drawn to same sex relationships is not reciprocated when questions are asked by those concerned at the inordinate promotion of homosexual or lesbian lifestyles. It can elicit the kind of aggressive animosity we see also commonly directed by pro-abortionists against those marching in support of the unborn child. The sheer venom, if not physical attacks directed against those doing this is deeply concerning. So, too, is the fact that our government - persuaded by those who have what many now regard as undue influence in our political, social and educational areas - actually passed a law against professional help being offered to any of our young wanting help in turning their backs on the same sex attraction that they feel.

This attraction of course is perfectly normal in those early adolescent years when it is almost de rigeur for girls to get crushes on other girls, and boys to hero-worship those with sporting prowess, or who excel in other fields. With adolescence left behind, so do these times, except in the case of a minority, some of whom remained fixated in same sex attraction. Those who are concerned and would like counselling have been deprived of this, even when backed by parents offering their support, by a majority of MPs conned into believing that so called Conversion Therapy would be dangerous for these youngsters’ mental health… very possibly the same MPs who would support the notion of those adolescents self-identifying as other than their biological sex…and in some cases demanding drastic surgery or drugs to attempt to become what they envisage.

From the sixties onwards, the so-called sexual liberation, regarded by some as progressive, has seen in the West what has been described as a new morality – viewed by many as the old immorality. While in so many parts of the world today homosexual behaviour is frowned upon, even, appallingly, punishable by death, perversely, the West’s decline into permissiveness has given those openly and extravagantly promoting homosexual, lesbian, and transsexual behaviour (as somehow superior to normalcy) the opportunity to present it as somehow superior. As we now see, it has come to be promoted as something to be celebrated - a source of pride with these marches and rainbow pride flags, challenging the relationship between a man and a woman, although we know it is this which ensures the continuation of the human race.

So influential has this radicalised gay pride movement become that lesbian or homosexual teachers, noting that their charges have developed crushes on others so prevalent in these adolescent years - and almost always outgrown - now seek to recruit them, trying to persuade them that they may actually not be heterosexual, sowing concern and confusion among our young at a time when they are so very vulnerable.

Moreover, many will maintain that concerned parents have every reason to object to our Ministry of Education supporting the gay pride days in our schools and encouraging children to wear pink on these days. Nor does it help to reassure conservative parents when our police officers are encouraged to also join pride parades with a police car painted in rainbow colours. But why?

For the question puzzling many is: why the excessive pride? With birth rates plunging worldwide and the horrors of abortion - killing unborn children whose tiny hearts unmistakeably start beating at six weeks after conception - the future for many countries is bleak. Yet in an act of great folly, our always permissive government has legislated for what many regard as a great nonsense, same-sex marriages. This epitomises the saying that governments can make something legal, but that doesn’t make it moral.

We know the pride movement is essentially antithetical to family values - although the family – father, mother and child - is the most important nucleus of any society. For a country founded on Christian values, the reminder is there in the Bible that homosexual behaviour is regarded as immoral. Moreover, some sexual practices undeniable promote the spread of disease and infection.

In almost all countries outside Africa, fertility is in rapid decline. The future for many countries - now seriously concerned about ageing populations and a rapidly declining birth rate - is more than sombre. It is little wonder when about 73 million unborn children are aborted annually according to WHO (the World Health Organisation), 200,000 a day. Yet a declining population has to support an ever-heavier burden of retirees with tax rates rising and hope for the future falling. And although one of the three main duties of government is defence of the realm, this defence is imperilled if an army cannot meet its recruitment targets. Marriage is the context in which people have children, and once the population slips below a fertility rate it can reach a point of no return. Even in New Zealand, the birthrate has fallen below replacement level,

It is little wonder then that the heavy promotion of homosexual and lesbian activity, through the centre-staging of gay pride - in opposition to the formation of that normal relationship between a man and a woman - is of concern to many, wondering about the reason for its celebration.

We should by all means feel compassion for those who have chosen or have been precipitated onto a path nature undoubtedly did not intend for the continuation of the human race. But what has possessed us to promote this now openly flamboyant movement, sowing confusion in and propagandizing our young?

It is argued by some that sexual permissiveness is helping to bring about the disintegration of society. Hence many querying what is happening to this country when we centre-stage occasions like Pride Parades, and promote gay activism to our children, as well as inviting drag Queens to read to them in libraries. And why is our Ministry of Education celebrating these activities in our schools? Do we really need the heavy promotion of this movement through rainbow crossings on our roads and the flying of rainbow flags? Is this really progress?

Why are our taxpayer dollars funding this? Is this what Chris Bishop, David Seymour and their party followers - let alone the police contingent and other major organisations - really support? Or have they been propagandized, and have not thought through the implications of their support for this and other parades?

New Zealanders deserve answers to these questions.

© Amy Brooke.

An earlier version of this article was originally published at www.100days.co.nz.

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

When that fine Australian writer Christopher Akehurst began a column with “Damn you, politicians. Damn you for what you have done to this country you were supposed to serve and govern well. Damn you for your chicanery, your incompetence and your ignorance” there would be very few New Zealanders who would not understand his lament.

In New Zealand we could provide a special condemnation for the previous Ardern/Hipkins government, undoubtedly the most incompetent and destructive in our history, which has not only left us with a sky-high legacy of debt and soaring inflation - thanks to former finance minister Grant Robertson’s gross mismanagement of his portfolio. Add to this a ballooning, unproductive public sector which has seen our present government struggling to tackle - and the heavy promotion of Ardern’s divisive race-based policies. We are undoubtedly in a very bad way.

However, not only Ardern and Hipkins, but previous National Party leaders and ministers have also accumulatively wreaked enormous damage in this country - too extensive to illustrate here, but readers should have no trouble itemising for themselves the list of poor decisions that have caused this once far more prosperous and socially cohesive country so much.

Akehurst himself goes on to enumerate the damage that has been done by both the sheer, unforgivable ignorance of the majority of Australian politicians in relation to the issues of the day and the ideologically-driven, destructive agenda which has produced the damage inflicted upon his and our societies.

We can include here the enormous cost inflicted upon New Zealanders by our governments endorsing the CO2 global scam, ignorantly demonising fossil fuels and permanently destroying productive farmland by covering it with pine forests – and Chinese manufactured wind farms - while acknowledging that even if New Zealand achieved the impossible Net Zero, it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - which, of course, has never been proven to contribute to global warming.

As British science writer Matt Ridley points out, the global warming craze is dying out, with hundreds of companies dropping their climate targets and Australia backing out of hosting next year’s climate conference. He notes that it has been a long, lucrative ride, that predicting the eco-apocalypse has always been a profitable business, with consulting fees spawning subsidies, salaries, consulting fees, air miles, best sellers, and research grants.

As he illustrates, different themes in recent years took turns as the scare du jour: overpopulation, pollution, mass extinction, acid rain, the ozone layer, nuclear winter, falling sperm count and so on. Each faded as the evidence became more equivocal, but no scare has grown as big or lasted as long as global warming. He adds that 40 years ago he first wrote a doom-laden article for The Economist about carbon dioxide emissions trapping heat in the air but soon realised that the effect was real but the alarm was overdone, that feedback effects were exaggerated in the models, that the greenhouse effect was likely to be a moderate inconvenience rather than an existential threat, and was beneficial to plant growth.

How familiar we are now with what he states, e.g. that the activists who took over the climate debate, often with minimal understanding of climate science, competed for attention by painting ever more catastrophic pictures of future greenhouse warming. “They altered the name to climate change so they could blame it for blizzards as well as heat waves. Then they inflated the language to “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” even as projections about future warming came down.’

“Yet scientists knew the announcements were nonsense, but they turned a blind eye because the alarm kept the grant money coming in. Journalists always love exaggeration. Capitalists were happy to cash in. Politicians welcomed the chance to blame others. Almost nobody had an incentive to downplay the alarm. If a wildfire or flood devastates your town, point the finger at the changing climate rather than your own failure to prepare. Almost nobody had an incentive to downplay the alarm.”

We are aware of the consequences that Ridley points out. For four long decades climate change alarm went on a protracted match through the institutions, capturing newsrooms, classrooms, boardrooms and our politicians. The price New Zealanders have paid for this has lessened our productivity.

The sheer hypocrisy of politicians acknowledging this, while white-anting our economy to make sure we goose-step in line with the ideologically captured members of our trading parties is unforgivable. While the American government now acknowledges the demonization of carbon dioxide is a massive scam, and China and India – far from phasing out fossil fuels – continue to aggressively build more and more coal fired power stations - our hypocritical government continues to pretend that the increased taxation it produces - and the control over individuals lives it has imposed - is necessary.

Arguably, although the damage accumulatively done to this country is multifaceted, the sheer folly of our politicians is possibly nowhere greater than in relation to the lack of intelligent oversight of our immigration policies… about which New Zealanders are never consulted. And although the prime duty of our government is what used to be called the defence of the realm – i.e. to serve and protect its people - our successive governments have long bought into the failed theory of the benefits of multiculturalism – and are still doing so, in spite of the shocking toll it has taken on other countries.

The relatively recent notion that the people of a country should be open to welcoming all comers, no matter what their cultural backgrounds, gave rise to the promotion of multiculturalism, with little regard for its consequences which, worldwide, have led to civic unrest and the fragmentation of social cohesion. Multiculturalism has been a massive failure, and has been well described as an idea whose time has gone.

NZ Flag from Ground Zero

Are our politicians really so ignorant in failing to learn what has happened to every Western country which has allowed Muslim immigration? Parts of England, France and Australia have become no-go areas, with endemic violence and the rise of anti-Semitism.

There are undoubtedly good, moderate Muslims, by no means wedded to the belief of death to the infidel, many of whom have wished to escape the fanaticism of Islamists in their own country with their inexorable hatred of Christianity. I well recall the kindness of a Muslim coffee shop owner north of Wellington, devoted to his three little girls, who, learning that my sister and I were returning from farewelling our mother who had recently died, insisted on providing us with second cups of coffee and almond biscuits for no charge. And then there was the well-disposed Muslim taxi driver in Auckland with whom I amicably argued about the undesirability of Muslim women being forced to wear the hijab - to the point where he conceded that he would not like to wear one himself – and that indeed the women had a right to object.

Jacinda Ardern, never one to miss a photo opportunity - no doubt to the dismay of brave Arabian women fighting against its imposition - donned one after the appalling Christchurch Mosque shootings by the Australian Brendan Tarrant in 2019. Was Jacinda Ardern, thus aligned with the oppressive mullahs, really ignorant of the fact that brave Iranian women, with enormous courage (openly defying the country’s most symbolic tool of the control of women - the compulsory hijab) risk imprisonment, fines - and even arrest and torture by refusing to wear it? One can only honour Mahsa Amini, the 22 year old Iranian woman detained in September 2022 by the religious morality police after she was accused of wearing an “improper” hijab. Her death while in custody produced widespread anti-hijab demonstrations with thousands of women taking to the streets to burn hijabs, advocate for women’s rights, and call for the dissolution of the Islamic Republic. These demonstrations resulted in over 22,000 arrests and more than 530 deaths.

Incidentally, one wonders why Tarrant has not been deported back to be imprisoned in Australia, given that Australia sends back to New Zealand criminals who were born New Zealanders.

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Basically, we are being faced with a numbers game. Given a tipping point of immigrants from a country basically antipathetic to the Christian values that underpin our democracy, then our country is in trouble, as indeed we are. Already, we are far from the one so basically harmonious that both Maoris and Europeans freely intermarried, to the extent that Maori, an ethnically separate race, no longer exist.– a fact conveniently overlooked when radicalised individuals constantly claim, as Maoris, special funding, attention, preferential treatment and co-governance, persuading our successive governments to grant them benefits not available to New Zealanders as a whole.

The disastrous path we are now taking is that of our politicians also embracing multiculturalism, under the aegis of Jacinda Ardern’s promotion of that weasel word diversity. One can only wonder if there is any aspect of our country which she and her government did not succeed in damaging.

It should, of course, be we New Zealanders who decide who gets to live here. A fundamental question for any country should be, “Who are these people and what are they like?” But we never get to decide – our culpable governments continue to simply inflict their decisions on us. Yet we well know that although all human beings are equal under the law – (or should be, which is now not happening in New Zealand, given the promotion of Tikanga by activist judges, and the favouring of those of part-Maori descent) all cultures and religions are not equal. And the underlying issue in relation to this and elsewhere – where the consequences have been obvious – is population change, and the effect on social cohesion which our governments are failing to address.

Of particular concern should be the fact that in 2019 there were already over 60 mosques in the small country. Reportedly, we now have 85 and two Islamic schools. Concern is raised about what they may be teaching, and given that one result of Muslim immigration worldwide is infiltration by fanatical extremists, which has produced the results in civic unrest and criminal violence we now see, we would be incredibly naïve to think that New Zealand will be the only country to not be faced with what has happened in so many other countries as a result of Muslim aggression. Nor, as it is sometimes claimed is, Islam a religion of peace. On the contrary, the word itself apparently means submission, not, peace - and historically it is not known for its peace movements but for that unique Arab word known as jihad which means an offensive war intended to lead to the conversion of the infidel or to have him annihilated. We should remember Salman Rushdie. What we have seen worldwide in France, the UK and elsewhere – even Australia - is the inevitable rise of Islamic fundamentalism - given a tipping point of Muslim immigration.

So New Zealanders have every right to ask if the government is going to cap the number of Muslim immigrants - given the important lessons to be learned…or if it has already done so.

Undoubtedly the usual vilification of those asking these important questions will occur here, with accusations of Islamophobia in the same way as homophobia and racism are targeted by those who undoubtedly have an agenda of their own. And undoubtedly most Muslims here at present would be good family people. But what the is government thinking of? In every western country where the Muslim population has grown large enough, even as close as in Australia, infiltration by Islamists with an anti-Christian agenda, often violently anti-semitic, reminds us that embracing multiculturalism - and so called diversity - inevitably promotes divisiveness. The December Bondi Beach attack is a salutary lesson.

Moreover, a 2019 study of Australian Muslims found 61% of Muslim men want classical Sharia laws recognised in Australian law, while 25% want to implement Sharia punishments. It is a sign of the times that whereas the Australian political leader Pauline Hanson was formerly vilified for the concerns she raised about uncontrolled immigration transforming our closest nation’s culture and demographics, her party is rapidly gaining ground.

Many would maintain we should only welcome immigrants whose values are not inimical to our Judeo-Christian heritage - encouraging assimilation - not fragmentation - to prioritise the Christian values which once stabilised this country… an issue which now needs no urgent attention… given the rise in violent crime and civic unrest.

How many New Zealanders - in fact, how many politicians - do realise that we now over 85 mosques in this country? Are they going to proliferate - and if so, what does it say about out immigration policies - and the possible consequences of Islamic infiltration? Have there been any limits set on the number of Muslims being allowed into New Zealand? Our government, without consulting New Zealanders, has apparently embraced multiculturalism based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. But as as that great Australian writer the late Hal Colebatch pointed out “a multiculturalism” which seriously says that all cultures are equal and that people should be welcomed holus-bolus into a country is mad. “

How many New Zealanders even know that 90% of the cattle and sheep slaughtered in this country are halal-killed and that the killing must be done by a “a sane, adult Muslim man” invoking the name Allah?

Where do we see the evidence our governments - our immigration ministers - are aware of the supremely important fact that rapid demographic changes without public consultation risk eroding social cohesion and reshaping democratic power in ways that are difficult to reverse?

We’ve already seen this in the constant kowtowing of our governments to a small, radicalised minority of part-Maori - by no means the majority - which has ever-expanding benefits showered on them on racial grounds only. A disgraceful recent example being New Zealand First MP Shane Jones making the Ratana group a gratuitous gift of ten million dollars - which Winston Peters cynically described as koha, a gift. Why? It certainly wasn’t a gift out of their own pockets. It was taken from all of us taxpayers, as usual, without our consent.

But what do New Zealanders now ever get a chance to consent or object to? In this election year the standard promises will be made – as usual disregarded after the election - as with the disgraceful abandoning of the promise to restore English names to all our government departments and institutions.

The only practicable way for New Zealanders to control their own governments and make the decisions themselves is to look to the Swiss model - see www.100days.co.nz

Without this, we remain little more than virtual slaves of the state - not citizens of a democracy.

© Amy Brooke.

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

In his brilliant Intellectuals – From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, Paul Johnson highlights the hypocrisy of what became many of our most highly influential, left-wing theorists, showing the difference between their personal advocacies and the rotten fruit of their legacy. Yet we have arguably fallen into a trap by misnaming as ‘elites’ those prominent in our well-entrenched, left-wing establishments who are basically self-regarding functionaries of the long-sustained Marxist attack on all our important institutions.

So successfully white-anting our democracies, they are in reality far from élite – a term long reserved for individuals revered as deservedly the best and most distinguished in any particular field. So why are we not calling them what they are? Such as indoctrinated, over-bearing hierarchies; bureaucratic mandarins or well-meaning, politicised ideologues? The most pernicious of these theorists uncritically embrace the nonsense of the quite mad French existentialists, long eschewing actual realities in favour of fantasising – even to the extent of promoting the ultimate delusions of individuals claiming to be other than how they were born, male or female.

The legacy of those persuading themselves they belong to our upper echelons has poisoned the well for so many – given that convictions of superior thinking have historically energised individuals into achieving leadership, and attracting followers. Why grant them the intellectual stature of misnaming them, even the well-intentioned – as the elites? Particularly when they are so successfully wielding the weapon of cultural Marxism, communism in drag, with its devastating attacks on the most important, stabilising institutions of our democracies.

Years ago, living in the old Oamaru-stone house built in the early twentieth century for a country doctor in Kurow on the edge of the MacKenzie country footing the Southern Alps, we inherited a magical old orchard originally planted by a pioneer woman doctor. An overgrown Eden, it contained long-forgotten trees including greengages, peaches, apricots, strange black-red apples, a quince, and a medlar – so little known at the time that only five others were listed as seen in old New Zealand gardens. Others had been found surviving still in woodland in Kent.

Our then home had an interesting history, with Dr Gervan McMillan settling there in 1929. Hard-working and generous to his patients, he also became the medical officer for the Waitangi Hydro Medical Association’s establishment of a health insurance scheme for workers in harsh conditions nearby, constructing the dam on the Waitaki river. Increasingly active in politics, and believing in the practical application of the teachings of Christianity, he developed his ideas for a free, universal and comprehensive national health service. Many leading figures in the Labour party stayed with him in Kurow, including Presbyterian minister Arnold Nordmeyer, later to join him in politics and become infamous for his legendary ‘black budget’.

Part of the living room of the doctor’s house now included what had been a small bedroom where the Australian-born Michael Savage had slept, when visiting. Heading the first Labour government from the 1935 election, Savage won support for its economic recovery policies and social welfare programmes. Regarded as the architect of the New Zealand welfare state, he became one of New Zealand’s most revered prime ministers with reportedly 50,000 mourners filing past his casket after his early death. It was while his eventual successor, Peter Fraser, was Minister of Health in that first Labour government that Dr McMillan was appointed chairman of the Parliamentary National Health Insurance Investigation Committee.

This produced a blueprint of the details for a National Health Service, a basis for the 1938 Security Act, which, however, was not supported by many doctors. By coincidence, when we later moved to Nelson, my husband inherited the practice of the well-respected Dr Oliver, son-in-law of the Scottish-born Dr James Jamieson. Formerly Medical Superintendent and resident surgeon at Nelson Hospital and a fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia, Jamieson became McMillan’s strongest opponent in voicing disquiet about the new social welfare system. He presciently warned that government-funded doctors would become ‘helots of the State’, with his leadership critical in defeating the proposal to make it illegal for doctors to charge patients.

The unforeseen consequences of so many well-intentioned advocacies are there in today’s culture of dependency, the constant clamour for more and more social welfarism about which the renowned Maori leader, Dr Apirana Ngata, also warned in relation to Maori – particularly given the New Zealand welfare system’s poor focus on employment.

Despite good intentions never being enough, why is that they are so often imposed upon a country? For some reason I recall the then strange tree planted 100 years ago in that old doctors’ orchard – so intriguing that it later became the focus of one of my trilogy of books for young readers, beginning with Night of the Medlar, which virtually wrote itself.

The gnarled, bent old medlar with its beautiful white rosaceous flower was reportedly bought back to England by knights from the Crusades. The Greeks and Romans knew it well. I recalled that in ‘The Leopard’, Guiseppe di Lampedusa mentions princesses of Sicily eating its fruit. Thought to date back over three millennia, it may well have been known to the Abyssinians and Babylonians.

Crucially, its large brown fruit is eaten only when it is bletted. At the time I asked my doctor brother whom we had followed into the old doctors’ house what it actually tasted like. His answer was rotten fruit… adding that, in evolutionary terms, it was the precursor of both the pear and apple tree. Legend had it to be the original tree of the Garden of Eden.

One gets gradually drawn to the flavour of the medlar. But what are we in our Western democracies to make of the fact that we have arguably inherited our own rotten fruit in the form of a kind of cultural collapse, an intellectual and social decadence, given that the old immorality is now praised as the new morality?

Crucially, what of the consequences when what we see all around us is that this is now the dominant, but poisonous philosophy promoted to our young?

© Amy Brooke.

An earlier version of this article was originally published in the Australian Spectator.

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

There is no doubt that a sense of outrage is growing across the country with people suggesting that New Zealand Post should remove the words New Zealand from its supposed services, as it is increasingly showing little interest in actually supplying decent services to New Zealanders.

This company may have an obligation to operate within its budget, but under Section 4 of the State-Owned Enterprise act of 1986 it was required to show a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the communities in which it operates, and accommodating these.

By now, many New Zealanders suspect that apparently New Zealand Post doesn’t really give a hoot about the communities which it is meant to serve, merely providing mealy-mouth statements to this effect. Yes, it has lost by far the largest part of its letter deliveries, given the usefulness of email, but it has also lost a large part of its business handling parcel deliveries through its own fault. Given a different CEO, the downgraded services – or lack of service it intends to provide to the public – could well be revisited.

There’s also a very good argument to be made that it is up to the governments of the day to ensure we have a first-class mail system even if it means tax payer funding. Diverting some of the multi-million dollar handouts still continuing to be paid to various Maori interests – such as Shane Jones’s shocking $10 million gift to the Ratana group, realistically, if cynically described by Winston Peters as Koha – simply a straight out gift – and the continued multi millions of dollars (accumulatively now amounting to billions of dollars handed over to prioritise supposed Maori interests) would be a sensible initiative. Why do we have Shane Jones’s Provincial Development Fund, overwhelmingly targeted to Maori-only interests? In fact, there is now no separate Maori ethnic group in New Zealand.

It is no wonder that so many cash-strapped and genuinely needy causes, such as increasing Pharmac’s budget for much needed cancer treatments widely available overseas (but not in this impoverished country) as well as prioritising our hospitals and providing much-needed mental health services, lack funding. It continues to be diverted to those making the most noise – a small minority of part-only Maori activists - by no means the majority - who are equally as fed up with this as all other New Zealanders.

There is little doubt that New Zealanders would prefer a decent postal service if it came to a question of prioritising this, rather than the ongoing raiding of taxpayers’ pockets to appease a small but strident section of the community many of whom – most vociferous in claiming disadvantage by being supposedly Maori – are highly wealthy individuals with even merely less than a 16^th percent of Maori genetic inheritance. We have long been, and still are, thoroughly conned, in this regard, at the mercy of successive governments’ pusillanimity in the face of ridiculous accusations of racism – or wedded to vote-buying.

And now we have the disgraceful situation where New Zealand Post plans to remove its postal outlets from stores all over the country, while untruthfully claiming that there will still be one available within 5 kilometres. This is simply not the case.

For example, coming in from north-east Nelson towards the city, from the outlying Hira area – the first populated one after the journey over the Whangamoas from the Rai Valley, the first postal outlet one reaches is at the excellent Four Square Store at Atawhai. One can park right outside to carry in heavy parcels, and the service is excellent. So, naturally, as it is the first and only one available after that long trip, New Zealand post has decided to remove it -without any consultation whatever with the local community who are now fighting back circulating a petition to do so, and determined to fight this decision.

If this first outlet is removed it will be a 20 kilometre (a 40 kilometre round trip ) to walk, drive or bike into Nelson city itself, where the post shop is crammed inside a Paper Plus store, fronting onto the main street. One would have to find somewhere to park- perhaps even a block or so away and pay parking fees, even be obliged to carry possibly heavy parcels some distance, possibly in the rain, to join a long queue inside the store.

So much for New Zealand Post’s forward thinking – 20 kilometres even to post a letter – then 20 kilometres back home. They’re not telling the truth.

If this government agency cannot supply a decent service, even with a possible change of CEO – for apparently good reason – then because reliable postal services are essential for a well-functioning country, there is a very good case to be made that the government should subsidise these. We all know what happened when our rail services were flogged off and privatised, to the detriment of the country. It is almost incredible that there is no longer a train service from Christchurch to Dunedin and further south, and that our roads are congested with heavy traffic, with long trucks towing two or three trailer-loads which should more appropriately be sent by rail. They increase the risk of accidents on roads as cars, caught behind these lengthy vehicles, try in vain to overtake and pass them.

The Postal Workers Union has also rightly objected to a practice which simply looks punitive, emanating from the New Zealand Post hierarchy, where the buck stops with the CEO. For example, if New Zealanders quite innocently address a communication to a firm, using its physical street address when the same firm has a Post Office box, posties have been told to return the letter or parcel to the sender, as it should have been sent to a P.O Box. They have been told it would save time doing so…that they should not readdress it to the P.O. Box where this is known.

This is absolute rubbish. This means that the sender will get back what has been sent with no idea at all about the reason for this happening – and, thinking there must be some mistake, may well simply send it on again to the same address. This is arrant stupidity, and it has been pointed out that many people write to Parliament addressing letters to MPs simply using parliament house’s address in Wellington – unaware that there is a private bag number available to be used.

This CEO’s directive cannot possibly be regarded as helpful – or providing a decent service to New Zealanders.

Nor can the decision in some rural and other areas to no longer deliver mail to people’s mailboxes – but to combine deliveries to a central hub some distance away. It will strike the reader that this is an excellent way to encourage mail theft. It certainly shows no concern at all for the elderly or frail who can no longer simply go to their letter box to check mail, but may have to walk or drive some distance, even in bad weather, just to see if they have received anything at all!

New Zealand Post has lost custom also through its own fault. Some years ago, it was suggested to a local branch that small trolleys could be left by the door so that people carrying heavy parcels in a long queue at Christmas time while waiting to get up to the counter, did not have to stand in line trying to juggle these. I recalled a local manager said it was an excellent idea – only two or three small ones would need to be provided. However, when the idea was advanced to the New Zealand Post’s hierarchy it was refused because of the supposed cost. Like many other New Zealanders, I then stopped sending parcels through the main post office and used courier firms instead – so they lost my and others’ custom. It was a classic example of stupid thinking bringing its own consequences.

Similarly, when new Post Office Boxes were provided in the foyer of the then main post office they were then smaller in height so reasonably large parcels could not be left in them. Instead, a card would be left and one would have to go and queue at the counter. Moreover, the new boxes were so low to the ground that elderly and frail people found it difficult to reach down so far to insert the keys to open them.

It certainly looks as if the thinking hasn’t improved.

No-one can claim that New Zealand Post’s services are improving – they are not- they’re deteriorating with less frequent mail deliveries now indicated. New Zealanders should not have to put up this constant down-grading of services. Moreover, when a far superior service is available to a customer who can step out of a car or walk straight into a shop without having to carry a parcel at any distance or try to find parking near a busy city office, it simply doesn’t make sense to close the far better choice.

Very possibly replacing this firm’s current CEO may well be an advantage, if quite unsatisfactory decisions are being made… some of them simply seemingly punitive.

To reiterate: if this company needs more financial support, a very good argument can be made that it is time that the government stepped in and subsidised the postal service to provide a more satisfactory one. The sheer wastage of the multi millions of dollars constantly thrown at part-Maori only interests – with little or no accountability ever ensuing – is not good enough… as with the gift Shane Jones and Winston handed over to Ratana.

It’s high time for the government to step up to the mark – but it will only happen when more New Zealanders throw off their inertia and rightly complain. The present Minister for State-Owned Enterprises is Simeon Brown, one of the most able MPs in Parliament.

Why not ring Parliament – 04 817 9999 – and ask to get put through to his office, and say it is time for the government to step up to the mark, and ensure New Zealand Post provides a far better service than what it is planning.

Or, of course, you could join those who do nothing – as usual – just complain…

© Amy Brooke.

An earlier version of this article was originally published at 100days.co.nz

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz

Although the move throughout the West to impose a cancel culture as a dominant form of control seems to be nearing its apex, the fight against the truth of issues has been decades in the making. For example, when moving some decades ago to Nelson, I tried to get from the local library some of the Enid Blyton books I and so many other parents had loved as children.

Blyton eventually wrote so many books that some of her themes became repetitive. But she was imaginatively outstanding, and her wonderful stories about the Faraway Tree, The Enchanted Wood, The Magic Wishing Chair, and Galliano’s Circus, followed by the Famous Five and Secret Seven adventure stories, spanned a career of nearly 50 years. Sales of her books were estimated at over 2000 million copies. As a young Froebel-trained teacher, with her father one of Britain’s top naturalists, her weekly courses of seasonal nature study evoked enthusiastic tributes from schools throughout Britain. She had an extraordinary knowledge of the natural world, coupled with a great flair for detail, and brought to thousands of children an increased awareness of the world around them.

Blyton was well aware that many children living in industrial towns in the 30s with fathers then on the dole couldn’t visit the country, but through her pages she tried to give them vicarious pleasure in the joys of rural life, and described how they might make tiny gardens of their own. One suggestion which met with a huge response was that country readers might like to send such things as budding twigs or wildflowers to their counterparts in town.

Inevitably, then, she became one of the first victims of the cancelling culture, which apparently sprang from the jealousy of another would-be children’s writer in Britain, and by the end of the 1950s librarians were banning her books in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Hence the tiny, bullying librarian I spoke with some decades later dismissed Enid Blyton with apparent contempt, her reasons hard to find. One was the silly suggestion that Noddy and Big Ears, in the stories younger children loved, had “an unnatural relationship”.

Doubtless this would be a reason to have these stories highly rated these days. Then there was the claim that she wrote for middle-class children only, that she had no social concern - utterly untrue. She and the many thousands of children who belonged to the clubs she formed raised astonishingly large amounts of money for many of the charitable organisations they took under their wing. She personally answered a staggering number of letters each week for the children who wrote to her, and whose views she always asked for. This didn’t stop the accusations piling up, including from New Zealand librarians and writers such as children’s books specialist, Dorothy Butler, who claimed that “regrettably”, she was a snob.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. The children in The Faraway Tree stories were poor, as were those in the wonderful Mister Pinkwhistle stories, where a little man with pointed ears set about finding injustices to remedy, helping poor families and disappointed children in dire straits. Children loved these stories of wrongs righted. And this may be part of the problem, for no one could deny that Blyton had extraordinary creative and imaginative gifts; that she created worlds of great enchantment and surprise; that she enhanced children’s appreciation of the natural world around them at the same time as she tried to inculcate canons of kindness, honesty, decency, and courtesy - as well as give them great pleasure.

It appears that it was her moral code that offended those now anxious to take control of the field of children’s writing. The librarians’ claim that there was no demand for her stories was simply untrue. The fact that I wrote for the then family-friendly New Zealand Woman’s Weekly some time back, pointing out all these things, did not win me any friends from those controlling our literary establishment when it came to my own books for children being cancelled.

So what of children’s writing today? J.K. Rowling‘s well-publicised stories drawing upon Ursula Le Guin’s stories of wizardry and magic, and in whose own writing Blyton’s influence can be detected, heralded the swing back to imaginative fiction. But largely, as the Economist magazine pointed out some time ago “the world of children has writing has become a matchless area for adult propaganda “- as indeed have our schools.

On two fronts, both as a children’s writer and book reviewer for National Radio, the Christchurch Press and other publications, I regularly got into trouble for standing up to the bullying hierarchy of the Left, who were laying down the criteria which authors were expected to endorse, if they had any hope of being placed in the annual children’s book awards. Worse, while a columnist for the then Dominion, our capital’s city’s newspaper, as a former Latin and French secondary school teacher with a postgraduate degree in English, and four sons attending state schools, concerned by both the decline in teaching standards and in the curriculum, I wrote about this. Apparently, this was unforgivable, particularly because I also queried the growing promotion of racial divisiveness, and the portrayal of those of part-Maori descent as, simultaneously, both victims and possessors of superior insights into the issues of the day - therefore to be deferred to in political decision-making.

Coupled with the Labour Party’s folly in turning the clock back to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, with all claims against the Crown now to be renegotiated, the results have been obvious. It began a still strong-going, lucrative gravy train of billions of dollars taken from taxpayers’ pockets and given to iwi – today’s corporate pseudo-tribes - in some cases because of markedly fraudulent claims inadequately challenged by under-informed Crown lawyers.

The politics of grievance, deliberately inculcated by iwi into the minds of young part-Maori has long demonised the colonists, deliberately ignoring the immense advantages the establishing of a Pax Romana by the British Crown gave to constantly warring tribes practising cannibalism and slavery. With no title to their land, all lived in constant fear of attack by neighbouring tribes. By then, Maori had also exterminated about 30 species of birds and destroyed an estimated 30% of native forest by fire when hunting to flush out prey, including the ostrich-like Moa, which then became extinct. The sanitising of pre-European Maori history and the promotion of the policies of resentment have done incalculable damage to New Zealand.

When I wrote in concern to raise awareness of was happening, an article of mine, A Question of Perspective, was among the top ten promised publication in the Christchurch Press at the time, from about 200 entries. When I queried why it never appeared, I learned that because of editorial timidity - the wish to not offend the local powerful iwi - it was not going to be published, regardless of its placing.

I’m reminded now of Canadian psychologist Jordan Petersen’s claim that is not dangerous and disciplined men with whom we should concern ourselves, but, rather, it is weak individuals who are society’s greatest risk. And indeed, they cost us so much.

For example, it was a thrill for me when A Ring Around the Sun, the first of the 21 children’s books I now have written was accepted by the University of Canterbury Press, its editor, from memory, a professor in mediaeval French and German studies. Highly enthusiastic, promising minor editing only, she was the verge of sending through the proofed manuscript, ready to print, when I became aware of a hydra --headed monster. A publications committee, some with vigorous ideas on how they themselves would have written the story, had reared its head. It was, in this country, officially “Girls Can Do Anything” year, and I was asked to change the two boys in this story into girls.

Other peremptory requests followed. I was to divorce the parents (the father was away in Greece at a significant time) to embrace a wholly new theme, quite unrelated to the story, about how well step-families could get on together. There were other bits of accumulative silliness, particularly a stern rebuke for having the children collect pine cones for the all-important bonfire in the story, on the night of the solstice. Apparently, this was “a wasteful public conflagration,” and I was directed to deliver the wood that the boys and their friend Mara had collected “to the elderly and needy of the community.” I was to specify, in the story, that “trailer loads of prunings and old burnable rubbish” were being used, and that since “prunings will be wet wood, old rubbish should be allowed as a readily combustible base.”

Many well know that once the thought police get on your trail, you are in trouble. The poor book editor wrote privately saying that she was on my side, but, rather than give into the bully boys and girls, I eventually withdrew the book. However, on the premise that one should never be a pushover, I made a great deal of trouble for the publications committee with the university establishment, as pusillanimous as hierarchies eventually are - as we have seen today with the extraordinary capitulation of so many in power endorsing the sheer nonsense of transgenderism. They must well know it is simply not possible - in spite of all the physical mutilation and drug taking - for an individual to basically change the sex into which one is born. And allowing males to participate in women sports is a cowardly capitulation to claims depending on either delusion or opportunism. A Ring Around the Sun, incidentally, was subsequently quickly accepted by the then Random Century’s commissioning editor.

With the rest of my first books for children came very good reviews which can be seen the books page on my website - https://amybrooke.co.nz - with one reviewer claiming that The Duck Who Went to Heaven was “destined to become a classic - my favourite New Zealand story,” and The Mora Stone winning two award nominations, including from the American Mythopoeic Society, with Mike King, television personality and mental health advocate, generously describing me as “quite simply, New Zealand’s best children’s author”.

This is not a view promulgated by the children’s literary establishment by whom my children’s books have long been ignored or dismissed, with one prominent reviewer who seems to have me in his sights, rather than the actual stories. A typical review of his would be advising prospective readers not to bother as they probably wouldn’t get past the first chapter anyway. Needless to say, he ended up judging the annual Children’s Book Awards.

But by this time I was already officially blacklisted, with my then distributor saying she could no longer distribute my books, as I had become “hated” - her word - by those controlling the awards and grants. When I asked how on earth they could hate me, as I didn’t even know any of them personally, she replied that they had realised that the Dominion columnist was the same individual who was writing those children’s books. They had vowed, she said “to take it out” on my writing for children. And they certainly did.

There were other areas where I transgressed. When, as one of the regular reviewers for the Christchurch Press, I was asked by the Literary Editor to review the first paperback edition of the much acclaimed The Bone People, I refused, as the book was basically preposterous, and suggested he review it himself. However, he said he was unwilling to put his head up above the ramparts, and if I didn’t do so he was going to hand it to a left-wing lecturer at the university who later became an MP for the leftist Labour Party. I agreed reluctantly, having given up on the book already after the first few chapters. I later discovered that many New Zealanders had also given up trying to finish it.

The Bone People was a story about a woman of great wealth who had built a mediaeval-stoned six storied tower with a spiral suitcase. Nothing was ordinary about this woman, Kerewin Holme, whose name and physical description bore an extraordinary resemblance to the writer, Keri Hulme. Clad in jerkins and silk blouses, learned in the exotica of spiritual and esoteric paths with a library containing books “on just about everything,” Kerewin wore precious rings on every finger and thumb, and owned a chest with a hundred pieces of jade. Everything was special about this Keri Hulme look-alike, from her goblets to her ring of swords and her knife, Seafire, superbly tempered, its sheath made of oiled leather engraved by the heroine with carved runes and white enamel. She collected precious agates, used patchouli-scented oil on her hairbrushes, had a wine cellar with Chinese ginger jars, wooden boxes of dates, barrels around the walls, shadowed chests in corners. With her Cuban cigars in cedar veneer wrappings, and her clove-impregnated cheroots, she was self-contained, wrapped in iron, played with oracles and consulted the cards. Glowworms lit her stairwell, with strange mushrooms growing there. On top of her tower was a star-gazing platform, her entrance hall hung with tapestries. Serenely she invited a poisonous katipo, “Little Death,” to crawl over her hand. She had “this curious heavy grace like something out of its element making do in a thinner medium,” and the sea seemed to come to her call.

Whatever else The Bone People is, it has no claims to be taken seriously as a New Zealand novel. Distinguished by its swagger, pretentiousness and crudity, relapsing into almost pidgin, Kerewin tells her doctor, whom she addresses as ”little medicine man”, just to write the prescription she wants, it being what “most of you jokers do most of the time.”

There was much worse, but the incredible thing was that the book ever came to be taken seriously by the literati. Until my critical review appeared, it had been widely acclaimed, a concerning tribute to the power and movement of the feminists’ movement which, through the Spiral Collective, adopted and promoted it in New Zealand and overseas.

I was already in trouble, having challenged the highly politicised criteria laid down for the government funded Children’s Book Awards which stated that authors should pay tribute to biculturalism, and prioritise stories with relevance to Maori, and to New Zealand children’s immediate environment only. What was finding increasing favour was not imaginatively extending children’s horizons, and telling real stories, but promoting the school of social realism dealing with teenagers’ supposed social problems. The children’s writer was to become primarily a psychologist pushing complex issues with adult themes into the children’s world.

Apparently, my review of The Bone People - later endorsed by prominent figures in the literary establishment who had until then kept their heads well down - was the last straw for our literary mafia. I was rung up by one of the editors of Listener, the leftist weekly widely bought is it was then the only publication containing information about all the television programmes. He was very cross indeed, told me that I was “finished in literary circles” and that they would make sure I never got published in Listener. Indeed they have kept their word, right up until today. In this small country, very much governed by cliques, I remain well and truly blacklisted

It is the result for children which is of concern when the bias is towards books written for the average or challenged reader, short-changing children, propagandising them and underestimating their keen intelligence. The consequences, of course, have been that so many have simply been turned off reading as I feared would be the case when previously reviewing for the National Children’s Book Week, showcasing the books publishers were prioritising for different age categories.

Equally as bad has been the sheer unpleasantness of so many stories, as with those by the much-acclaimed Maurice Gee. For example, I was once more in trouble for describing his The Fat Man as a disturbing and unpleasant read. Gee had already been in trouble for killing off a child protagonist in an earlier book, and he was extremely good at describing the nasty, the depressing, the psychotic and the bizarre. Even when in his stories the bad are defeated, the end is still often bleak, giving a child reader the impression of nastiness still looming around the corner.

I recorded at the time that in The Fat Man, the fat man himself is an utter horror, a repulsive, evil man who robbed and probably killed his old mother who waited by the railway station for years in case he should at last come home. Gee’s deliberately in-your-face descriptions include, for example, “the black hair on his chest pasted down like slime… he squirted creek water from his mouth like a draught horse peeing… he brought the chocolate close to his mouth and dropped a gob of spit on it okay kid…there you are, eat it all up…The man grinned at him…the scar curled…it was like a worm lying in his cheek…the worm in his cheek curled again”.

My criticising this book at the time brought me up against the ubiquitous Tessa Duder, herself a writer of chick-lit stories who had already targeted me as being apparently right-wing, and who later managed to leave me out of her very full list of New Zealand children’s writers. Duder, who at the time was the convener of the children’s awards judging panel, described The Fat Man as “a superb children’s book” making the farcical claim that, “It is clearly written for children and is therefore for them. “ I was unable to make sense out of that.

Another best-selling children’s writer is equally crude in her language use, for example describing “puke on his face”, “snot on his cheek” and thinking it great fun to put whoopee cushions on a visitor’s chair or “a plastic poo” on a toilet seat. As a reviewer I found other children’s authors similarly crude, but the most striking of all was the letter I got from a children’s writer in residence at Auckland Teachers College when I questioned the over-casual language in the newsletter being sent out to children’s writers. Her fairly detailed suggestions included,“ Put your pen where all that’s (sic) shits coming from and get down, lady, ”with implied threats. Hardly surprisingly, her own children’s stories contain similarly crude, smart-alecky language. In her book, inevitably nominated for the book awards of its year, its boy protagonist describes someone’s mother as “so posh and pointy, you know, with elbows and boobs like ice-cream cones.”

There are many more examples of books promoted to children which are poorly written, if not basically propagandising our young on issues which contravene long-held values, and which would very much disturb parents. However, many never get to see them, and the very mediocre writing long being inflicted upon children and teenagers by librarians and teachers has undoubtedly turned them off reading.

Yet literature is one of the means by which minds eventually reach maturity, and outstanding children’s books are valuable, because behind the book is a person to whom life has said something worth passing on, whom experience has shaped. Worthwhile books reveal the possibilities which come from great imaginative insights.

The tentacles of the cancel culture have now gripped so many aspects of our lives that we are all the poorer for it. To stand by and do nothing to oppose it is arguably culpable. Jordan Petersen is indeed right in saying that is it is weak individuals who are society’s greatest risk.

© Amy Brooke.

An earlier version of this article was originally published in the Australian Quadrant Magazine in December 2024 - https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/society/cancel-cowards/

New Zealand children’s author, poet, and socio-political commentator can be found at www.amybrooke.co.nz