By Muriel Newman

National has a problem. They don’t seem to know why they were elected. It is bizarre.

After six years in charge, Labour had stuffed up the country. Their incompetence was universal.

When they were kicked out of office in October 2023, inflation was raging out of control, the economy was tanking, crime was rampant, health and education were failing, and racial division was on the rise.

The Labour Party today is no better than it was back then. The failed ministers are still there, with their destructive ideas on full display.

In light of all that, it is astounding that Labour rates at all in the opinion polls. Yet they do – they are polling on a par with National.

Surely, that must send a message to National’s hierarchy that their first 18 months in office is not delivering what voters had expected.

In fairness, they are making good progress on some issues. But the problem is, they are making almost no progress on many of those other concerns that motivated New Zealanders to vote for change.

To see what National is failing to address, we need to look back at Labour’s record in government – and understand that powerful cabals drive the party.

In a frank interview with the Investigate Magazine, then Cabinet Minister John Tamihere revealed that in 2005, those factions were ‘women, gays, and self-serving unionists’.

He described Helen Clark’s Labour Party as “all ‘rosy’ on the outside, not the inside”.

Of the unions he said, “I can’t stand them… It’s always about threats and intimidation… They don’t deserve that level of influence. These people think in timeframes of ten to 15 years.”

Many of the country’s most powerful unions, including E tū – which also represents media, the New Zealand Educational Institute, and the Public Service Association, are still affiliated to Labour, paying them levies, writing policy, and assisting them to undermine the Coalition’s reforms.

When asked about the “machine” that existed on the ninth floor of the Beehive, John Tamihere described it as “formidable”: “It’s got activists in everything from the PPTA all the way through. Its intelligence-gathering capabilities are second to none.”

Asked, “What is the most powerful network in the Labour executive?”, he was unequivocal: “The Labour Party Wimmins Division. It’s about an anti-men agenda… Men’s problems are traditionally dealt with by the criminal justice system. Women, on the other hand, get millions of dollars… Men get nothing… My job is to talk to kiwi males who are feeling out in the cold and also to stand up against some of the PC bulls**t.”

When questioned why “social engineering” policies were so popular on the ninth floor, he responded, “Because Helen has been brutalized by people who have called her lesbian, no children and all the rest of it. Her key advisor Heather Simpson is butch, and she’s very comfortable in that world – that’s why it’s got strong legs.”

He then explained that this network had been embedded throughout the public service: “When you go through the Beehive it is infiltrated with it, in key policy and decision-making processes and the upper echelons of the ministries, and it skews things. It is an unhealthy weighting, because even if you give a policy directive they’ll skew the policy underneath you.”

Putting aside the irony that these were the words of John Tamihere, his comments made some 20 years ago still resonate today – although over those years Labour’s Maori caucus has become far more influential and radical.

The factions driving Labour were revitalised during the Ardern era. Under the guise of identity politics – a Marxist agenda which centres the struggle for social justice on the so-called ‘oppressed’ groups in society – race, gender, and sexuality were embedded throughout the public service.

Through special ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (DEI) clauses in the 2020 Public Services Act recruiting was re-directed to prioritise identity rather than merit. As a result, state institutions have been stacked with Labour activists pushing their ideological agendas – and largely ignoring Coalition directives.

In fact, a large proportion of the 19,000 additional Public Service staff recruited during the Ardern years are DEI hires.

The emergence of Labour’s He Puapua agenda to introduce tribal governance, resulted in a rapid escalation in the number of highly paid Maori managers. For example the number employed by Statistics New Zealand – an agency that signed a co-governance deal with iwi leaders to help ‘massage’ census data – rose from zero in 2017 to 26 percent in 2023, and in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage the numbers increased from zero to 29 percent.

As a result of the explosion of DEI initiatives and the embedding of the fabricated Treaty “partnership” culture throughout the state sector, the public became engulfed in a tsunami of “woke”.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Conservation, as this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator David Round, a committed conservationist and former Law Lecturer at Canterbury University, explains:

“It is hard to believe, now, that the conservation movement was once a power in New Zealand. From the enormous popular agitation to save Lake Manapouri, all through the battles of the 1980s to protect native forests, conservation was a major political issue. The public filled large halls for pre-election meetings asking ‘Which party will save the forests?’

“Where is that public now?

“Alas, the wokesters are now in charge.”

Accusing conservation groups of “woke lobbying for Maori supremacy”, David condemns their support for the handing over of the conservation estate to tribal interests:

“Maori do not have a gene for conservation. The environmental record is clear, for example, that before the arrival of Europeans, Maori were responsible for the destruction by fire of between a third and a half of New Zealand’s original forest cover. Maori were responsible for the extermination of far more species of birds before European arrival than European settlers have eliminated since… To assume that any Maori input anywhere will be conservation-oriented is wilful blind stupidity.”

He believes conservation organisations have now become “the enemies of conservation.”

Many of the “woke” influences that emerged during Labour’s time in office – like the proliferation of DEI in the public service – were initiated by new legislation. The 2020 Education and Training Act was the vehicle used to indoctrinate children. From pre-school to tertiary level, the focus of education was transformed from academic excellence and achievement, to Maori rights and the Treaty.

With tribal leaders pressing for control of the country, Labour’s enforcement of Maori privilege didn’t stop at state agencies. All organisations that received taxpayer funding, like the media through the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, were targeted – as were organisations that relied on the government for registration like Real Estate Agents, and charities like St John… now called “Hato Hone St John”.

To the dismay of voters, the 2023 election and change in Government has not stopped the separatists’ attempt to transform New Zealand into “Aotearoa”.

The private sector is now being attacked by activists – especially the 24,000 incorporated societies that are required to re-register with a new constitution by April 2026 as a result of Labour’s 2022 changes to the Incorporated Societies Act.

Tens of thousands of groups throughout the country are being pressured into adopting new constitutions based on the Treaty – even though Treaty obligations are the sole responsibility of the Crown not the private sector.

As a result, organisations like the New Zealand Audiological Society now has a Treaty-based constitution, which requires the indoctrination of members through anti-racism training, while the Pharmacy Council, now requires pharmacists to prioritise Maori.

InternetNZ has also been captured, not only prostrating itself before the alter of woke by declaring itself to be systemically racist, but it is seeking redemption through a proposed new constitution that will embrace co-governance with Maori activists.

Such madness could, of course, be stopped if members of these organisations simply stood together and objected as a group, but as we’ve seen with the Real Estate Institute, the majority prefer the safety of silence instead of risking their livelihoods by voicing their concerns.

The long-term impact of DEI hiring – no longer employing the best person for a job but filling identity quotas instead – is not only lowering New Zealand’s productivity performance, but it also risks tragedies when employees without the right skill set are given crucial responsibilities beyond their capability.

Furthermore, by discriminating against people on the basis of race, gender and sexuality, “woke” programmes dangerously undermine New Zealanders’ right to colourblind equality before the law.

But instead of stepping up and dealing with these growing concerns, the PM continues to turn a blind eye. And this is where National has a serious problem.

When the country tossed out Labour they did not vote for a weak Labour-lite leader. They voted for real change to remove the cancerous policies of the Ardern years.

And unfortunately for Christopher Luxon, US President Donald Trump has provided New Zealanders with a model of the sort of decisive action that can be taken to turn this situation around.

On his first day in office, the President issued an Executive Order to rescind ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’ programmes from all federal agencies, and private sector groups that contract with the government.

The President not only wanted to terminate DEI in the federal government, but the private sector as well. He wants to restore hiring on merit in the US so that Americans once again have the opportunity to go as far as their hard work, individual initiative, and competence can take them.

As a result of the President’s measures, it is now illegal in the US to hire employees based on race, gender, sexuality, or other diversity quotas.

And while National is still nowhere to be seen in this debate, last week hope did appear on the horizon in the form of Winston Peters with a Bill to remove “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” regulations from the public service.

Through the Public Service (Repeal of Diversity and Inclusiveness Requirements) Amendment Bill, New Zealand First wants to ensure employment decisions are based on merit not DEI targets:

“This bill would put an end to woke left-wing social engineering and diversity targets in the public sector. New Zealand is a country founded on meritocracy, not on some mind-numbingly stupid ideology. The public service exists to serve New Zealanders – not to be a breeding ground for identity politics. Removing woke ‘DEI’ requirements will give the public confidence that the right person is in the right job based on their skills, not their identity.”

However, since the proposed legislation is a Private Member’s Bill, whether or not it is drawn from the Parliamentary ballot, will be a matter of chance.

But this issue is far too important to leave to chance.

The point is this: an extremist agenda that was put in place by Jacinda Ardern is now being rolled out across the country, ‘capturing’ private sector organisations and forcing them to become agents of radical indoctrination – pushing the race-based lies that Maori did not cede sovereignty, that New Zealanders are racist, and that tribal leaders are in partnership with the Crown.

Yet the Coalition, which we elected to protect us from this madness and rid the country of such dangerous propaganda is standing by and doing nothing.

Is it any wonder Kiwis are feeling disillusioned.

What National needs to do now is adapt the New Zealand Fist Bill as Government legislation to end the tsunami of woke and finally get New Zealand back on track.

Furthermore, by once again making it against the law to discriminate on the basis of race, gender or sexuality, this legislation would progress one of the Coalition’s most Important objectives: “reverse measures taken in recent years which have eroded the principle of equal citizenship.”

National needs to take stock of why Labour failed, if it is to avoid the same fate. And they need to do this quickly – before their credibility is sucked into a vortex from which Christopher Luxon will find it difficult to recover.

Originally published on NZCPR.