The ‘Annus Horribilis’: Politics, protest and the hijack of New Zealand

Opinion

Anneleise Hall

As 2024 draws to an inauspicious end, and the world waits on eggshells for what fresh hell 2025 will bring, people all over Aotearoa (if social media is to be believed) are jumping on webinars, cracking beers, positioning the brollies and kicking back with submission primers and guides for government bills.

And if this is you, go you good thing!

We are in the age of resistance.

For Aotearoa it was a year of unprecedented political bad faith, conflicts of interest and naked deception. We discovered the coalition Government, a dark triad of ideology, vested interests and narcissism, does not consider itself bound by ethics or good practice – and we have few guardrails to protect us legally or constitutionally from a rogue government. 

It seems the sacrosanct ‘Coalition Agreement’ is basically a Trojan horse for donors to write their own policy and pick off what they want of our public land, housing and critical infrastructure, with nothing off the table.

NZ voters naively let this Govt in based on a mild status quo election pitch of tax cuts and ‘fixing the economy’, now it’s like we have been slipped a roofie and the miners, investors and rentiers are lined up outside the door with a public accountability condom and a number.

Backlash has been consistent from early in the term as the govt gave kickbacks to tobacco companies and landlords, dismantled evidence-based public-good projects at pace, trashed the disability sector and laid off thousands of public servants.

Chris Bishop and Shane Jones courted corporate donors with the Fast Track Bill and David Seymour launched an attack on Māori and Te Tiriti with the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. Meanwhile the coalition installed heaps of their former colleagues and think tank mates on committees to dismantle health, education, building regulations and resource management.

Ex-National MPs leaped onto the neoliberal gravy train in droves. Political operatives unleashed from deep in the bowels of the ACT party, New Zealand Initiative, Hobsons Choice and the Taxpayers Union installed themselves into govt offices, hanging bespoke framed portraits of Milton Friedman and King Leopold over plastic plants as they made arrangements to inject libertarian poison into the state service bloodstream after they’d harvested it’s organs for the market.

Never mind that the tax cuts were shit and the hospital promises were lies, the NZ public has been caught like a possum in the headlights with a blitz of austerity and bad policy that’s hitting everything, everywhere, all at once. The govt has kept people largely confused and reactive. Public input to policy has been omitted or cut short. The Govt uses a limping media environment to its advantage by hiding reports, excluding disfavoured commentators and refusing to answer questions. 

The painfully obvious revelation that banal soundbites are all Prime Minister ‘Bucket-List’ Luxon is competent at hit us like pigeon shit on the head. 

Facing the press like a bland, bald, blue-suited ‘70s taking doll, the pull his cord and out comes a recorded phrase "our number-one job is to fix the economy.”, “I think we’ve actually done really well,”, “I think the reality is we’ve made some really tough decisions”, and the famously ubiquitous “what I’m saying to you is…”

As NZ faced its biggest protest ever, when Christopher Luxon was challenged by the media whether a coalition agreement 'has priority over the constitutional arrangements, settled law and wellbeing of NZ' he glitched, stuttering like a jammed mechanical toy.

The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill which, according to Luxon, is going nowhere and won’t be supported through a full process, still gets to suck up six months of taxpayer money. The bill ignores history, destabilises our constitutional foundation, challenges decades of settled law and scholarship, disingenuously stirs up racist myths and sentiments and platforms manufactured ideas that serve the interests of a wealthy pocket of New Zealanders. The Bill seeks to basically rewrite and legally ‘define’ Te Tiriti o Waitangi contextually in the image of the alternative white supremacist framed history and constitutional impotence favoured by the likes of Don Brash’s extremist group Hobson’s Choice.

The Regulatory Standards Bill is about what rules NZ laws need to adhere to and consider when constructed and could also be applied retrospectively. It could potentially allow whomever the Govt appoint to redefine at a foundational legal level who has what rights to and who owns what, to entrench the power and  ‘property rights’ of the ultra wealthy above any other human or environmental rights, of any kind, with no redress or legal pathway to challenge it.

This bill could completely redefine or erase Te Tiriti, human rights, environmental rights, previous settled law and the role, or exclusion, of the judiciary in our legislation. It could allow certain sectors to make their own rules and decide their own laws with no courts for us to appeal to. These bills align with and are influenced by current wider global right-wing ideology and seek to entrench corporate power over people.

Unfortunately it’s become terrifyingly apparent that we don’t currently have a functioning democracy, in that the government is not really governing per se, it’s ignoring advice, normal process, and public backlash, to facilitate dismantling of the public service and to privatise assets.

But if there’s any positive from this year it seems that people in general are over that shit in increasing numbers. 

The odious Fast Track Bill was a warm up and people are rising up in so many different ways; marching, writing letters, signing petitions, organising, doing workshops, running webinars, creating how-to guides and explainers, joining political parties, forming support groups, posting events, posting information, writing articles and essays, making videos and doing submissions - all in unprecedented numbers. Lets do more of this!

The backlash to the introduction of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill reached far and wide. 

During the vote to introduce the bill Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke spectacularly tore up her copy and started a thunderous haka in the house that echoed around the world. It seemed like a spark that lit a fire. Tangata tiriti allies joined in force with Māori around the country in local events to support a massive hikoi culminating with a magnificent 84,000 strong crowd at Parliament. A petition to kill the bill got more signatures than ACT got votes at the general election. 

Meanwhile inside the Beehive Libertarian Death Cult operative Seymour spitefully introduced the Regulatory Standards Bill, quietly while the crowd was outside.

As is his disingenous way, the public submission periods for the two bills were short and cut off dates fall in the summer holidays with TPoToWB on January 7, and RSB on January 13.

Sigh. I haven’t even started on NickyNoBoats Willis.

Ferry Christmas Aotearoa. From the train wreck government that’s crashing our economy.

Needless to say, without thousands more words about the Coalition of Corruption, it’s been a grim year for many in Aotearoa and there is not much political hope for short-term improvement in governance under such an extreme neoliberal agenda and a donor-captured government.

But there is hope in us.

Our numbers, our creativity, our pressure and our demand for a better vision that honours Te Tiriti and recognises ecological and social needs can make a difference. This year we showed up. More of us woke up. More of us realised what we have to lose and what we are ready to fight for. We literally and figuratively put our boots on the ground.

We are going to have to try and continue to get in the way of this Government as much as we can and learn how to use our strengths where we lack some of the ideological right’s resources. 

Unlike the right-leaning influence channels funded by rich listers or dark money, the progressive crowd-funded independent news and current affairs spaces and commentators are building fast growing, active communities as people seek to find more nuance and depth beyond the repetition of Government PR talking points with little or no examination. 

Opposition politicians, academics, activists and public advocates are doing candid, long form interviews live on podcasts and webinars, sometimes directly answering public questions. The media landscape is shapeshifting and the traditional narrative gatekeepers are being bypassed. 

Some commentators are looking more deeply at the vested interests and alignments with overseas political influence groups and cover material that the main stream media deliberately ignores or content it omits. Independent commentators don’t have word count or topic constraints. If you are this far through you may be thinking that a good or bad thing at this stage…!

Council of Trade Unions Economist Craig Renney attracted nearly 1000 live viewers recently on Big Hairy News, a weeknight, late night politics and news chat pod/stream on YouTube. Craig has become a loved leftie sort-of-celebrity, his patient plain speaking way of walking through the numbers with no spin - and no malice - has made him kind of the trusted Ash Bloomfield of disaster economics.

Chris Hipkins got similar numbers when he appeared on the same show. That’s more people than you would fit in many halls around NZ, not counting the many more streams after the event. It also creates enduring content that is shareable. It’s a win win. When the opposition are sidelined people increasingly want to see an alternative govt in waiting, so it's great so many opposition MPs and experts are willing to take up the opportunity to directly connect with the public.

Economist and journalist Bernard Hickey is doing some great work and bringing experienced, evidenced views to the discourse. The Hoon, a weekly podcast he co-hosts with Peter Bale has built up a strong following, along with Bernard’s subscriber newsletter The Kaka. 

The Māori media ecosystem with The Hui, Mata, Te Ao and online publications like e-tangata are growing wider audiences and have excellent content.

A healthy public-good media ecosystem can go deeper than headlines and soundbites, provide a counter to the government-centric mainstream, offer respectful spaces for community and conversation across different groups and reward thoughtful and considered contributions rather than incendiary rhetoric and dog whistling. Through finding shared stories of the outcomes we do want we can figure out how to get there and make it happen.

So for all the scorched earth I see little green shoots for 2025 Aotearoa.

I don’t believe we are overwhelmingly the racist triggered marks ACT think we are, and I don’t believe a majority want the corporate servitude this Govt has planned - they just need to realise it. 

So 2025 is a year of growing solidarity and pushing back.

We’ve got this, together. Kia kaha.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Summer Solidarity Submission Fun: Have your say

Lots of webinars and guides online

Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill - Submissions close Jan 7, submit here: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/make-a-submission/document/54SCJUST_SCF_227E6D0B-E632-42EB-CFFE-08DCFEB826C6/principles-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi-bill

Regulatory Standards Bill Discussion Submission Guide: Closes January 13

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XxP4NnxLwHitgBBPCBxWF0go14Uy5oUHdeOlWJ_ZQFE/mobilebasic

Background: https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/the-dangerous-bill-flying-under-the-radar/