Former PM Hipkins Misled Five Million Kiwis & Betrayed Trust in Government

When the current Leader of the Labour Party was Prime Minister, on 7 March 2023, in the name of his government, over five million New Zealanders were mailed Census papers. They said on the front page that filling out the forms, stacked full of highly confidential questions about one's personal life, was "required by law". At the top of the page, a sworn statement was made by the NZ government, namely that "The information you provide will be kept confidential by Stats NZ and is protected by the Data & Statistics Act 2022". That never happened. The information was acquired by private organizations and private individuals, which had been handed the Census forms by virtue of a contract with the Ministry of Statistics. Today it was announced those private outfits photocopied the forms. No-one has any idea how those photocopied forms were used. Take a look at the government's solemn promise on the documents you signed:

Is there an apology from Labour's Hipkins who was PM at the time? Don't dream of it. Is there an apology from his Minister of Statistics, Deborah Russell? Don't dream of it. No. Its another Wellington fix: just get the current Acting Head of Stats NZ to resign. For many years - until 2020 - Stats NZ was led by a person who had never even studied statistics. But the guy who was Captain of the Ship, Former PM Hipkins, at the time when 5,000,000 Kiwis were misled into thinking that their most private of data, including on "sexual identity, whether they have any variations of sex characteristics (also known as intersex status)", personal income, private address, ancestry, and more, would be kept confidential - he just walks away from it. So look out. You may see your Census 2023 data posted on the Web one day, for everyone to have a laugh at. The moral of the story is: don't trust the government.

A Plea to the Leaders of National, ACT and NZ First: Shaft the Main Stream Media & give most of your interviews to Podcasters, Bloggers (yes us) & Alternative Platforms.

I spoke with Radio NZ today - their Morning Report staff - who told me that ACT Leader David Seymour has instructed his Members of Parliament not to give interviews with them. The reason is that he feels they are biased against the party and made it look bad in past interviews. The Main Stream Media, of course, do regard this government as illegitimate and believes that it should choose it, not the people. It thinks the people are too dumb to understand the problems and needs Big Media to tell them how to think. That's fine - but then why are National, ACT and NZ First not piling into new start-ups & alternative media outlets? This Blog had over 170,000 site sessions in the past year from almost 40,000 unique visitors in 84 different countries. We've become far more influential than our politicians realize. How come? I get mails from a who's-who of NZ who've subscribed, with comments. The journos from the Big Media companies subscribe & often base stories around the blog, but don't tell readers and listeners that it is their source.

Now here's the trick: under the political system NZ used to have, "First Past The Post", a party has to win a seat to get into Parliament. That means a popular Blogger in the UK, which still has this system, may swing a few percentage points of the vote, but it will not win any party a single seat, making them quite ineffective. Not so in NZ. Should you run Blogs that get picked up & sent around social media & bigger outlets, its not so hard to shift a few percentage points of the vote. Under our MMP system, that corresponds directly to shifting seats in Parliament (that are allocated in direct proportion to number of votes). A swing of a couple of percentage points of voters corresponds to shifting 2-3 seats in our 120 seat Parliament. So instead of 60-60, it shifts to 57-63 seats (or up to a 6 seat majority).

Our MPs would do well to figure out the power of small alternative media outlets in NZ. So the question is: why does our PM & Finance Minister go back & back to Main Stream Media outlets that loathe them & seek every opportunity to make them look bad? When I compare notes with other folks in our "industry" who also blog, or run radio stations like The Platform, we're all wondering: why hasn't the new Coalition moved into elevating these outlets with full force? Most of us don't even have a profit motive - we're not even in it for the money - more just influence.