It took 40 days for a three-party coalition to form government in New Zealand but, now that it has arrived, it’s not wasting any time in unwinding many of the progressive policies of its former leader, Jacinda Ardern.
The three-party coalition of NZ National Party, ACT New Zealand, and NZ First has committed to reverse many key Labour policies that made headlines around the world during Ardern’s five-and-a-half years in charge. [emphasis, links added]
The new government – a coalition between center-right National, libertarians ACT, and populists NZ First – has already made global headlines for abandoning world-leading smoke-free laws.
But changes are also coming to electric vehicles, sex education, and hard-fought gains for the Maori community.
The new coalition is the most reactionary government [that] Mark Boyd, a political researcher at Auckland University, has seen during his 40 years covering New Zealand politics.
He said the vast majority of the policies announced by the government are taking things “back to the way they were” before Ardern’s election in 2018.
“By reactionary, what I really mean is reacting to Labour: they have very few policies, they just want to roll back what Labour has done,” he said.
“If you argue that the government of the last six years was more ‘woke’ or ‘radical’ and the previous was more conservative – it’s like: ‘take us back’. …snip…
Electric Vehicles, Other Green Boondoggles
Labour’s incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – which offered rebates of up to $NZ7,015 ($6,500) for electric vehicles and slapped $NZ6,900 fees on high-emissions vehicles – are gone.
[The Pacific Ocean island country only ranks 74th globally in terms of carbon emissions, accounting for just 0.09 percent of the world’s emissions. –Source]
The coalition parties had framed the legislation as unfairly targeting farmers and tradies and successfully relabeled the policy as the “ute tax”.
Scrapped too are plans to install 10,000 new electric vehicle chargers across New Zealand.
Work has stopped too on the Auckland Light Rail, an embattled project intended to have already been completed but was labeled “a white elephant” by Luxon during his election campaign.
The changes represent a return to an earlier status quo. Like many other democracies, though, controversy frequently centers on cultural issues. [For example], the uptick in Maori names for government departments under Labour has topped the incoming government’s agenda.
“That’s one of the areas where the pace of change was a bit fast for people,” Coughlan said.
Read full post at MSN
Another one (green energy nonsense) bites the dust. I keep looking at Australia and wondering when its citizens will also rise up and stop their “green” idiocy. It’s starting to slowly happen in various European countries as either left-wing parties are ejected (see Netherlands) or conservative parties like the Tories in UK start to backtrack.
There’s hope for Canada. Unfortunately, Trudeau can hold on until October 2025.
“Ute”? Short for “Utility”, think ‘small pickup’.
The Kiwis just threw a Monkeywrench into Big Brothers Globalists control Machine
All Climate Alarmists should all go live in a Grass or mud Hut for the winter without any fossil fuel products it would scare the Garden Burgers out of them
It sounds like the coalition is united in retrenching away from Labour programs. BUT, I fear it is not in full understanding of the absolute SCAM of the Green movement and the actual science. The Science, so well extolled on this forum, needs to be explained by the politicians to the people.