Hooton on the poll slide

Matthew Hooton writes:

Recent protests have been dominated by a hotchpotch of weirdos whose comparisons of Ardern with the worst mass murderers are as offensive as they as stupid. Ardern is not a Hitler, Stalin or Mao. But she is increasingly governing like a second-term Robert Muldoon or Helen Clark, which is surely bad enough — especially given what followed in their third terms, with moves like the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act and the Electoral Finance Act.

Actually I would say she is more like a third term Clark or Muldoon, than a second term one.

A stench of bewilderment, detachment from reality, confusion and lack of candour has joined the old odour of incompetence that has surrounded Ardern’s Government since it first became obvious in early 2018 that it had no idea how to go about delivering its signature promise to build 100,000 KiwiBuild homes.

With a handful of exceptions like David Parker, the criticism that this is a government of student politicians rings true. It is not just that they don’t know how business produces goods and services to generate revenue to pay wages and returns on investment, but that most have never even thought about how the paper and toner gets in the photocopier in the university library, or how the campus gets cleaned at night.

It must be nice to have never worked in a business that had to perform well or face closure. A career path from student union to political advisor to MP is much easier.

For her part, Ardern never told anyone her Government was moving from quarantining sick people in hospital or the Jet Park to self-isolation at home — until media noticed the numbers from the Ministry of Health didn’t add up.

As of yesterday, 1230 people with Covid were self-isolating at home, despite Health Minister Andrew Little saying the system was designed to cope with no more than 120. Most of those allowed to self-isolate are unvaccinated.

Despite this, Ardern persists with her Government’s cruel and unjustified lottery system denying tens of thousands of New Zealanders their rights as citizens to return home, even if they have already had Covid, are double-vaccinated and consistently test negative for the disease.

The madness continues.