The New Zealand government relies upon a science body known as Te Punaha Matatini (Centre for Science in Society) whose work is funded directly by the office of the Prime Minister and cabinet.

Today, Te Punaha Matatini published a 21 page document entitled “The Murmuration of Information Disorders” (see attached release from the Science Media Centre) designating those opposed to the government’s pandemic policies as violent right wing insurrectionists planning the weaponised storming of parliament and the execution of public servants, academics, journalists, politicians, and healthcare workers. 

An utterly false characterisation worthy of the worst excesses of historical propaganda.

This 21 page document, represented to the public as a scientific paper, contains not a single discussion of the scientific concerns being raised in opposition to government pandemic policy.

It omits for example analyses of the government’s own official figures which show that the vaccinated are more vulnerable to infection, hospitalisation, and death than the unvaccinated, a fact that has been deliberately hidden from the public.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern introduced today’s Te Punaha Matatini report with the words:

“One day it will be our job to try and understand how a group of people could succumb to such wild and dangerous mis- and disinformation. And while many of us have seen that disinformation and dismissed it as conspiracy theory, a small portion of our society have not only believed it, they have acted upon it in an extreme and violent way that cannot stand. We have a difficult journey in front of us to address the underlying cause.”

Since when do reasonable scientifically-based questions asked of the government in good faith constitute violent insurrection?

I am tempted to think that Ardern could just as well be talking about her own government. The Prime Minister and the social scientists(??) working at Te Punaha Matatini might do well to read the New York Times, (although they probably don’t do so because the official policy of the New Zealand government is to discourage any information that is not sanctioned and edited by themselves).

An NYT article on May 10th 2022 entitled “Emergent Hid Evidence of Covid Vaccine Problems at Plant” reports that

“Emergent BioSolutions, a longtime government contractor hired to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, hid evidence of quality control problems from Food and Drug Administration inspectors in February 2021 — six weeks before it alerted federal officials that 15 million doses had been contaminated.”

A reasonable observer might conclude that early (and later) concerns being voiced about vaccine safety were justified, but the New Zealand government is far from reasonable.

A succession of scientific papers published in reputable journals during recent weeks (which we and many others have reported extensively and communicated directly to the government) have in fact fully justified concerns about safety and efficacy, but unbelievably our government is in denial and still moving ahead with propaganda advertising of their mRNA vaccination agenda for all ages and, as today’s Te Punaha Matatini report shows, labelling any opposition as a conspiracy with violent aims.

How Did the Transformation of the Nz Government Come About?

New Zealand has a small population of 5 million, but it has been used to trial new products in order to gauge what the public reaction and acceptance might be in bigger markets overseas.

Never more so than during the pandemic. Take up of the Pfizer mRNA Covid vaccination has reached up to 95% of the eligible population.

This has been achieved through a transformation in the style of government, media control, science funding, intellectual standards, and international relations unprecedented in the western world, along with the coercion of draconian employment mandates and the pursuit of dissenters through compliant courts.

This has been engineered under the leadership of a person with a bachelor’s degree in communication who grew up in a strict rural Mormon household and cut her political teeth under the Blair administration in London. In keeping with her upbringing and education, Ardern is a leader who is sure she is right and is prepared to enforce her orthodoxy against all opposition and reason.

Her international perspective is one of unquestioning acceptance of the authority and right to rule of global institutions. Her top confidant and mentor Helen Clark, former NZ Labour Prime Minister, is closely associated with this outlook. Ardern recounts that she begins her day with a discussion with Clark over breakfast.

Like Ardern, Clark is renowned for her iron fist management style. She ruffled feathers at the United Nations Development Programme, which she led from 2009 to 2017, reportedly undermining human rights and supporting China’s Belt and Road initiative.

On 9th July 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Clark as co-chair of a panel reviewing the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the response of governments to the outbreak. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) examined how the outbreak occurred and how future pandemics can be prevented.

Nothing says more about the overt global agenda of Ardern and Clark than this May 11th 2022 statement of the New Zealand government:

“The establishment of a pandemic treaty/instrument was a key recommendation of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and is one of New Zealand’s foremost global health priorities”

Like China, New Zealand’s fading international reputation for successful management of the pandemic was actually built on a single policy—control the borders, restrict entry, and impose lengthy quarantine.

The Current Situation in New Zealand is Deeply Concerning

Ardern controls the media and the science dialogue through a mixture of government funding and exclusion of dissent. The government has spent big on saturation advertising advising complete safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, and continues to do so.

It has instituted funding of cultural groups, GPs, and commercial organisations who promote vaccination. The level of funding is so generous that it has distorted prior long standing economic and political relationships.

So far the government has spent on the order of 100 billion dollars on the pandemic in addition to normal expenditure. To put this in stark perspective, that is equal to the total annual government budget prior to the pandemic—more than $20,000 for every man, woman, and child. This is borrowed money which will have to be repaid through increased taxation of an already struggling population.

We Have No Constitution in New Zealand, the Power of the Government Is Absolute.

The control that Ardern’s government exercises over the courts, government agencies, parliament, media, independent regulators, and over the vast majority of the population is staggering and rigidly enforced. Dissenting medical professionals are excluded from practicing and in some cases prosecuted also. They are also mercilessly hounded and vilified by bought mainstream media.

In an atmosphere of strict government control, more worrying aspects of information control have emerged. In some cases noted by my scientific colleagues, policy and pronouncements that they have demonstrated are in conflict with published research have disappeared from the public record.

Even rare court rulings in favour of caution have been rapidly bypassed by simply passing new laws without debate. Court rulings about mandates have also been openly flouted, as happened when the military vaccine mandate was ruled illegal. With the support of the government, the military said the courts had no jurisdiction over its operation and went ahead anyway.

Ardern has introduced her policies in such a dedicated, persuasive, secretive, and complete way that almost the whole population of New Zealand has complied. They have accepted limitations on medical choice, judicial protections, human rights, press freedom, freedom of information, privacy, employment conditions and opportunities, standard of living, and social interaction.

Ardern’s successful efforts to persuade the population that government should be your only source of truth, have all but negated any of the longstanding mechanisms of government accountability. A majority of the population have all but concurred with Ardern that the unvaccinated may be safely blamed for every government failing and omission; and for all Covid case loads, hospitalisations, and deaths contrary to all evidence.

The opposition parties have apparently accepted that they will in future go about their business using the same Ardern doctrines and techniques. Accordingly they have failed to sound the alarm, investigate Covid science publishing deeply, or oppose draconian legislation. They have joined Ardern in labelling peaceful protest as unacceptable and illegal.

Ardern on the Global Stage

Ardern is about to deploy her international political capital to promote the globalisation of her policies and outlook. Her public persona can be deceptively mesmerising. You should be worried.

The world’s economy also has no constitution. So far Ardern appears to be happy to allow it to be controlled by global economic predators. Pfizer has been uncritically promoted by her, and the notion of WHO control over New Zealand’s sovereign rights is being welcomed with open arms. It fits with her strict hierarchical perspective.

Ardern may be viewed by naive foreign governments as a pandemic success story unfairly criticised in her own country. Stop for a moment and consider that she is about to lend her support to the promotion of a new world order on the global stage using her trademark persuasive techniques of propaganda, coercion, and control of information.

From May 24 updated vaccine passes are available for download, the current ones expire on June 1st and will be valid for 6 months.

The legislation governing their use is curiously deceptive, although the government claims vaccine passes are no longer required, they have allowed businesses to require them for entry if they wish.

Moreover, employers can legally require that their staff be fully vaccinated and many do. The government also requires a number of its employees to be fully vaccinated including medical professionals, health, disability, and care workers, prison staff, and border workers. Most New Zealand universities still require staff and students to be fully vaccinated.

Currently, over 700,000 New Zealand workers and students (about 20% of the over 12 population) are still covered by some form of vaccination mandate.

Many more are put under various kinds of pressure to comply. To maintain their status as vaccinated, by June 1st presumably they will all have to have completed boosters.

The vaccination requirements for students are especially egregious. The incidence of vaccine induced myocarditis among the young is concerning and the risk increases with each inoculation.

As the government’s own Covid infection, hospitalisation, and death rates show that vaccination is not conferring any statistically significant protective effect, why are any vaccination mandates still in effect?

During the pandemic, a network of legislation, regulations and financial support has evolved to encourage vaccination. As the risk from Covid has subsided and new studies have demonstrated that mRNA vaccination is ineffective and even harmful, the regulations have not been dismantled.

The net effect is that there is now a regulatory framework which protects government, businesses, and medical professionals from liability if they harm the people they are supposed to be protecting.

No one wishes to be responsible for any damage done. Moreover, so many people are involved, it is not all clear who you can complain to if you are affected or wish to opt out.

The government happily claims it is no longer requiring vaccine passes, merely issuing them. Yet is still funding the media to promote mRNA vaccination and paying for saturation advertising affirming that it is safe.

The government is also working hand in glove with social media companies to ensure that information about risks is removed.

Medical professionals claim that vaccination is safe and effective by definition and they are only doing the job they were trained to do.

Faced with this all court press, businesses requiring mandates argue that they are just being sensible. Vaccine manufacturers are not liable because they are protected contractually from blame.

Such convoluted buck passing is not rare in business.

A few years ago, our photocopier had frequent breakdowns. My predecessor had been faced with the same situation and he had signed a piggy-back contract to acquire a replacement photocopier.

The contract rolled up the financial obligations of the earlier contract with the costs associated with the new copier, but the replacement had quickly acquired similar deficiencies.

I found that our charity was liable to fulfill financial obligations amounting to a whopping $120,000 over the five-year term of the contract yet the cost of a new copier was just $16,000.

The problem was that the useful life of a busy photocopier was less than the five year term of the contract, so inevitably you ended up with a worn out copier you haven’t yet paid for.

There was the manufacturer who sold you the copier, the leaseholder (usually a bank) to whom you were legally required to make payments for five years, and the repairer who came if you called in a fault.

All of whom passed the buck. I sorted it out by reading the small print which required that repairs be made, taking legal advice, and stopping the payments.

If you think about it, we are in much the same situation, the first course of vaccination didn’t work and caused problems, now we are being told to take a second course. Our payment is actually the very real increased risk we are being asked to shoulder.

If you are being mandated or coerced to be boosted against your will, I suggest you hold out and take legal advice.

Only 70% of those eligible in New Zealand are boosted, and currently, the rate of Covid hospitalisation of boosted individuals in New Zealand is higher than the unvaccinated.

So Jacinda is vaccinated, boosted, wears masks, dutifully isolates, and she has Covid. She is urging us to do the same. Her self-belief astounds. Words fail me.

I woke up at 4 am this morning and sat wondering what I could say that might persuade people to reconsider their faith. I fell back to sleep and dreamed I went to a media conference about Covid, the organisers showed us a video about how to install fence posts, I pleaded with the press to realise that freedom of expression was at risk, as I spoke the whole audience began to laugh at me.

In the morning, I recounted my dream to my family, my daughter reported that she too had woken up from much the same dream. Of course, this was not prophetic dreaming, it is the new normal we have been dreading and now must live everyday. Stop the bus I want to get off.

I was just in Wellington, dull party central of the hard working civil service. It was the full monty of mass conformity. Masking was as near 100% as makes no difference.

Now that 2 million vaccinated Kiwis have caught Covid, New Zealand Twitter feeds are full of people worried that the unmasked have been stealing their immunity. They are forming a society of the convinced against all evidence, Jacinda will surely be their hero and president.

This has happened despite there being increasing evidence that masking does not stop the spread of infection, and a great deal of evidence that it harms our health.

A recent study of mask wearing in Finland concluded:

“According to our analysis, no additional effect seemed to be gained from [mask wearing], based on comparisons between the cities and between the age groups of the unvaccinated children.”

It appears to me that science sprinkled on the NZ media is like water off a duck’s back. Even without science, the media is training the public to be (like themselves) oblivious to the obvious. Look at a map of the world, and observe that many countries with the least Covid also have the least vaccination.

I am bombarded everyday with new data analyses which indicate that mRNA vaccination has been ineffective and dangerous. Rather than stopping infection, hospitalisation and death, it is associated with immune deficiency and excess all cause mortality. The boosters take the biscuit. Are we such as lemmings, driven to self-destruct when we are overpopulated?

Meanwhile, we are bombarded with calls for censorship of social media and revocation of free speech. The NY Post reports that Nina Jankowicz a verified twitter user, tapped by Joe Biden to head his new US agency of disinformation, is demanding the right to correct tweets which she considers false. Jankowicz is well qualified to correct everyone’s understanding of science, she has a BA in political science.

I do want to wake up from this dream, but I know that even as I write there are people busy in biolabs around the world creating new illnesses probably with the express intention of mandating me to take their patented vaccine. In most cases, they are funded by the government and trumpeted as heroes by the bought media.

As John Maynard Keynes said:

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the wickedest of men will do the wickedest of things for the good of everyone”

Justin Fox, a commentator favoured by the World Economic Forum, author of The Myth of the Rational Market (or should it be World?), writes on May 1st in Bloomberg :

“The vaccines have been spectacularly effective at preventing severe disease and death…”

and presumably for balance continues:

“…scientists wildly underestimated the deadliness of the disease.”

Conceding that Covid vaccination is ineffective at preventing transmission, he mused with us that perhaps only repeated infection and the growth of natural immunity (a concept which NZ government scientists at Te Punaha Matatini have labelled a conspiracy theory) could defeat Covid, but he left us with this parting shot of government folk wisdom:

“wearing masks on buses and subways ought be encouraged even after the mandates go away”

If you can locate a coherent theme in his article, let me know. Justin Fox is also educated in political science, which says just about all that can be said about mainstream media Covid advice. Our Jacinda would be proud of him.

A few months ago I requested that the local authority remove a couple of trees on their land that were leaning dangerously over our driveway.

Today I received an email affirming that they had completed the work. I went down to look at the result and the trees were still standing. They had ticked all the boxes, assessed tree health, taken photographs, written reports, and then axed some trees somewhere, but not mine.

I immediately thought: “This is why you shouldn’t put the government in sole charge of your personal health”

This week our government announced that it was extending the success (??) of the pandemic vaccination programme to include multiple other vaccines. It is creating a personal vaccination journal for every person.

No thanks, I want to write my own journal and retain my right of informed decision and medical privacy. My father died after being prescribed medication that was contraindicated for his condition. It was a mistake for which no one accepted responsibility and there was no redress.

As long as they follow the rule book supplied by the pharmaceutical industry, doctors will get paid whether their patients get better or not. They will not face discipline even if their patients die as a result.

medical misadventure is the third leading cause of death

In fact, medical misadventure is the third leading cause of death. 50% of the population suffer from at least one chronic illness—illness which will never get better despite a lifetime of medication. The pharmaceutical industry makes so much profit, that even when they do lose in court, it’s a flea bite in their cash flow.

If a surgeon cuts off the wrong leg, he will face court proceedings, so why don’t GPs and the drug manufacturers face meaningful consequences if their drug prescriptions cause harm?

The New Zealand Bill of Rights is Being Ignored

Although New Zealand doesn’t have a written constitution as such, it does have a set of practices and values which are underpinned by statutes and conventions. These include the right of medical choice.

Curiously, the medical profession, encouraged by the government, seems to be mostly exempt from these rules. Employers now also have a right to invade your medical privacy and insist that they control what goes in your body.

I’m appealing to ordinary people here to think this through. If someone is doing a job but there are few if any consequences when something goes horribly wrong, is that a good system?

I hope you are saying NO.

Now, what if they are not even obliged to explain themselves or catch up with the latest knowledge in their field? What if compliance is compulsory?

That is precisely the situation we find ourselves in. For the last few weeks I have been highlighting newly published studies in leading journals pointing to serious dangers of mRNA vaccination, but the medical profession is keeping mum.

Worse, there is still an unending stream of government advertising urging boosters and advising of their efficacy and safety. Employers are still enforcing mandates with the sanction of the government.

Your employer now owns certain rights over your body

There is a long history here of erosion of ethical standards and safety procedures. Doctors appear to be advising the government to require us to pop the pills and suffer the shots, but they don’t want to be responsible for what happens and they want to get paid, come what may. Your employer now owns certain rights over your body.

The government says it is obliged to ensure that everyone follows medical advice. Obligated by what and by whom? No one seems to know, because there is no law that says that should be the case (quite the reverse actually).

We could call it a case of constitutional overreach, but this would be just a few fancy words covering up what in any other profession would be called a crime.

If a fun fair ride collapses, injuring some children, the owner is responsible. There are no arguments that can be advanced in mitigation. The owner cannot say thousands have ridden safety and these ones were just unlucky. Yet that is precisely the medical excuse.—Thousands have been vaccinated, some have died—unfortunate, but necessary.

How so necessary? We now know mRNA vaccination is not preventing transmission, hospitalisation, or death from Covid. It should be quite clear by now that the protection promised through mRNA vaccination is a faded dream promoted by pharmaceutical companies, hired experts, compliant doctors, and paid media. Certainly, no reason to hand over our right of medical choice to the post-pandemic medical state.

The Post-pandemic State is Manipulative

Yesterday (and most days) we were given a taste of what the post-pandemic medical state looks like. It was revealed the government has been paying Fuse Creative, a brand agency, to promote pandemic policy.

As a result, pop stars like Anika Moa and pop culture radio stations like The Edge and many others have been pumping out the good oil. Fuse Creative alone reportedly received $50,000 for one weekend’s work.

Presumably in the near future medical product placement will be normalised.

In the next Zombie Apocalypse movie, expect to see the zombies injected with something labelled mRNA. Miraculously they will be restored, a few unlucky zombies might drop dead, then the hero will tell us that it is the price of freedom.

Today a Guardian article written by Ian Sample (or was it Simple?) used phrases like “the roaring success of Covid vaccines” adjacent to phrases like “the virus remains rampant in the face of mass immunity”. The combination of hyperbole and oxymoron dazzles.

The article went on to say we need a nasal vaccine to complement the mRNA injection. Possibly in some future medical dystopia (which might just be now), the rich will wear aqualungs with vaccine added to their air and the poor will just have to spray it on their fish and chips.

If we swallow this tripe, we only have ourselves to blame. Highly qualified scientists (more and more of them) are sounding the alarm, while the paid media remain stuck in a grove. Doctors are keeping the faith. They are prepared to go down with the ship.

Questions are Being Ignored

We ordinary citizens should remember it is normal to ask questions and abnormal to refuse to answer. The list of unanswered questions has become very long.

It is extraordinary to listen to the outrage of medical experts, the government, and the media if their pandemic advice is challenged. Puffed up with importance, immunity from prosecution, and lack of accountability, the medical profession has guided the whole country across legal boundaries. Given an inch, they have taken a mile, and now wish for more.

If you have a reaction after eating peanuts, your doctor will tell you to avoid them. If you have a reaction after vaccination, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield will likely require you to have more shots.

This is the new post-pandemic medical state, all aboard or you will lose your job. Steel yourself to be pricked and poisoned by someone who has assumed constitutional supremacy, while the government and their loyal opposition nod sagely in approval.

No one is above the law. We do have a Bill of Rights. It should be followed.

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When I was at university I read a book by Vance Packard called The Hidden Persuaders*. It remains as relevant and true today as then.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Packard delved into the advertising world of branding and psychological manipulation of consumers. He realised that this involved a transformation of our traditional experience-based values into the acceptance of implanted ideas.

Prior to the advent of television, much of everyday knowledge came from personal experiences, book learning, peer interactions, and handed down traditions.

The Hidden Persuaders revealed the psychological techniques used to guarantee the acceptance of mass produced consumer items. Powerful admen were tapping the irrational propensities of the consumer mind, they used the applied psychology and sociology created by the propaganda arm of the government during World War II.

Very often we are susceptible to what we want to hear and believe, good comforting news favourable to our deepest desires is often far more acceptable to us than hard realities or uncomfortable truths.

Packard was writing 65 years ago, today we are a consumer society and a media-viewing public so attuned to carefully manufactured images that we have difficulty distinguishing reality from wishful thinking.

Subterfuge is Now a Mainstay of Business and Politics

The actual techniques of persuasive and deceptive advertising are not now taught as cautionary tales as they were in my day, but as prescriptions for success in the cut-throat world of politics and business.

We, the general public, are highly conditioned to accept the nuances of branding. 500 handbags may all serve virtually the same purpose, but their differences in price, quality, desirability, and utility are magnified by branding.

Similarly, 500 almost identical politicians are differentiated by branding rather than by their past actions and actual capabilities. They are schooled in hollow rhetoric and all the skills of the demagogue. They offer almost impossible possibilities to an electorate who have become conditioned to uncritically accept the exaggerated claims of advertising.

The regular acceptance of patently false or misleading ideas conditions the uncritical mind. We accept advertising telling us that we live In a clean green New Zealand, even when we know this is a manufactured dream and a gross exaggeration. Such uncritical acceptance weakens our psychology—we are no longer in charge of our truth.

Physical Harm has Become a Permitted Outcome of Government Policy

The real problem arises when politicians realise that they can effortlessly segue from wishing thinking to deliberate and criminal deception, without anyone being the wiser.

When deception involves turning a blind eye to physical injury, a line has been crossed. Such has become the case during the pandemic. We have heard that:

• People do not suffer adverse effects from mRNA vaccines.
• The vaccine will protect you from infection, hospitalisation, and death
• Everyone hospitalized with Covid is unvaccinated.
• The virus without doubt came from a wet market, (rather than a bioweapon laboratory).

The list is a long one….we are at a crossroads.

How do you Protect Distorted Reality From Discovery?

When you are advertising a faulty consumer product, eventually poor reviews, and competing products that work well, will kill it off. But:

• What if there are no reviews allowed?
• What if there are no competing products?
• What if politicians are your only source of truth?
• What if you are told that things would have been so much worse if you hadn’t got vaccinated?
• What if you are swathed in a mask and discouraged from meeting your peers, or worse encouraged to fear them?

If you read history, you will recognise these as the tools of tyranny. If you watch television uncritically, you will be none the wiser. If you discourage communication between peers you are acting as a dictator.

Control of Information has Become a Matter of Faith

The PR machine that is informing us is highly skilled in deception. It recognises our human need for faith and shamelessly substitutes idolatry. The idols of the pandemic are mRNA vaccines. The false prophets are epidemiologists and modellers. The media is paid to agree.

Last week a Stuff newspaper editorial proudly trumpeted its new programme The Whole Truth aimed at medical misinformation. It is being funded by our government.

A government who also pays a New York PR firm to sample our social media posts. A government who pays a group of scientists—Te Punaha Matatini—to support their policies and label alternatives as conspiracy. A government who announces themselves as our one source of truth.

The sleight of hand is hard to identify if you are lost amongst the rampant fear mongering of the pandemic. In actuality 99% of our health arises from the food we eat, our daily routines and exercise, the rest of the night, and the joys of the day.

The PR dream that pharmaceuticals alone can offer quality of life or freedom from disease is a manufactured fantasy. Over the years, the protection offered by traditional medical ethics has been eroded as more and more adverse events from largely ineffective medicines are labelled acceptable, and even inevitable. Compulsory compliance comes next.

Constitutional Reform is a Way Ahead

Parliamentarians of all parties have engineered a coup in all but name. The overreach of power is unprecedented. The lack of constitutional protections is handicapping any efforts to resolve the manipulation of information.

• Parliament is supreme. 62 newcomers can pass any law without reference to any long standing body of wisdom.
• The NZ Bill of Rights is advisory only—we have no rights other than those granted to us by whomever happens to be in the majority this week.
• We don’t have a formal written constitution—leaving the door open for the abuse of power.
• Because of parliamentary privilege politicians are not obliged to speak the truth and there are no mechanisms such as impeachment to hold them to account for lying.
• The judiciary serves the dictates of Parliament—there is little reference to universal and internationally-recognised standards of fairness.
• Control of much of our economy and the media is in the hands of foreign entities and powers who wield a subtle influence on our government.
• Levels of party allegiance and conformity restrict independent discussion.

Immediate Fixes That Avoid Social Disruption are Possible:

• The NZ Bill of Rights could be ‘entrenched’ as a constitutional provision that is beyond the reach of parliament alone to alter. This will strengthen the individual rights that the judiciary can protect.
• The control exercised by party whips can be reduced to allow MPs to vote more often according to conscience. For example by reducing the MMP threshold to one percent.
• Parliamentarians should not be allowed to tell lies with impunity but should be subject to the same laws as anyone else.
• Provisions of direct democracy such as those in Switzerland can be introduced and implemented through the use of modern technology.
• Options for choices in health and education need to be strengthened.

Firstly a NZ constitutional conference should be called to discuss these and other issues which would strengthen the accountability of our democratic institutions.

The second step towards a resolution requires the formation and election of a single issue party with broad support dedicated to specific constitutional reforms.

Upon completion of reform, a second election would allow the appointment of a new government functioning under a constitutional umbrella that guarantees freedom of information and protection of individual rights.

Knowledge is Independent of Parliament

Importantly, our new constitution needs to recognise that knowledge is independent of the exercise of parliamentary authority. Knowledge has its own canons of veracity. Knowledge is matter of:

• Personal experience and experiment
• Scientific rigour and logical analysis
• Extended use and evaluation of safety

Government in its essence involves the capacity to balance individual and social interests. The recognition of knowledge sufficient to guide such a balanced policy requires debate, experiment, proof, and consensus among all the stakeholders of society, not just one group or special interest.

Such reform will require courage and perseverance. New Zealand has a long history of social innovation and fairness. We can rise to the task, and leave the mistakes of yesterday behind.

The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard is on Amazon as a book or on Kindle.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.