Don’t Question, Don’t Complain.

"Job losses in the public sector aren't the end of the world."

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here?
What better time than now?

So it turns out that I owe you all an apology.

It seems that all of the terrible things this government is doing, impacting the lives of many, aren’t necessarily ‘bad’ per se. Those things aren’t an issue, unless we discuss them.

Problems arise when people hear about the awful things that are happening to the lives of others, or to our society, or our environment. The solution is readily available. No more talking about it, no more problems. Easy.

It’s like the old adage in the US, which they used to ignore homosexuality within the military. Their approach was “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people. Instituted during the Clinton administration, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011.

It’s simple to apply this to the impacts of government policy too. If you think someone’s suffering as a result of the changes they’ve made - don’t ask. Then the really clever bit, if it’s happening to you - don’t tell.

If you do that, life will be much easier. Although mostly for Nicola Willis. But that’s good too, right? She’s a person with hopes and dreams, just like the rest of us.

Ok, the things she has in mind might feel more like nightmares, like oh my god can we just wake up from this already? They may inspire feelings of great hopelessness, creating widespread despondency. But is that any reason to question someone’s dreams?

Actually.

Hmm, while I think of it, “actually” is another one of those words or phrases that this government likes to use to stall and deflect.

Like when they say “there are a range of things”, which in fact means “there’s no evidence, this is all based on vibes”. Or, in this case, what “actually” actually means is “I don’t care about the things you just said, and actually I’m a bit pissed off you said them, so I’m just going to say ‘actually’ a lot until you move on.”

For example:

Anyway, what I was about to say was that actually when it comes to that advice, of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, Nicola Willis has an even more specific phrase in mind. “Don’t question, don’t complain”. Or, in other words - “suck it up”.

Wouldn’t life be a lot more relaxing if we just turned a blind eye to all these things? If we didn’t bother poor old Nicola, or the rest of the government, who are actually terribly busy? We could just put a smile on our faces, a song in our hearts, and actually let Nicola go about her business.

That would be her preference, because at the end of the day, it’s just not fair to complain.

They’ve got a mandate, we should just sit back and take our medicine, and not complain like poor losers. Even when these things are happening to people that we care about.

Let’s start with that last sentence.

The one in which the Finance Minister of New Zealand is complaining about the high level of coverage given to her job cuts, and the fact that she would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for these meddling journalists, and their job losing flatmates.

For the benefit of any readers who might not have been raised on Scooby-Doo and possibly missed the reference above this clip may help, or not.

The audacity of those journalists, to not simply ignore what was happening to their flatmates - for goodness sake, whatever happened to patriotism?

I know the Scooby-Doo reference and clip above are a bit silly, but for some reason I found myself thinking of cartoon villains. The sort of fictional frightener that would not only complain that people were making them look bad, but more so that they’d been misunderstood, that their nefarious actions weren’t actually “the end of the world.”

Can we just stop for a moment and consider their plight...

You’re a ruthless free marketeer, who believes in small government with low taxes and minimal services - but even given all that, surely you care about the people you’re having to sacrifice on your altar to capitalism? Don’t you?

Not our Finance Minister it seems. Her response to the thousands of people that she’s making redundant. The ones who will be lying awake wondering how the hell they’re going to pay the bills, or find another job in this market. Is to say it’s “not the end of the world.”

It’s hard not to feel for Nicola. She may not have the wherewithal to actually express compassion or feelings of empathy towards those whose lives she is harming, but she does at least have the awareness to know that it’s not a good look - and it would be best not to have it reported on.

Poor old Nicola. Perhaps it’s just the reality of the Finance role, let’s see what Labour spokesperson Barbara Edmonds had to say.

I really hope it’s not too heartless. I was very sorry to see Grant Robertson go but I’ve been hugely impressed by Barbara - she has got ‘it’. I just hope she doesn’t turn out to be quite as matter of fact as Nicola.

Barbara Edmonds (Source: 1News)

This is what she had to say:

“Wow.

I wonder whether the Minister of Finance would say to a public servant who has just lost their job “it’s not the end of the world” to their face?! Maybe Nicola can pay for their bills or mortgage?

And it gets worse…she blames the high media coverage she is getting on journalists who flat with public servants.

Just nasty.”

So much for that theory. Turns out in Barbara we have another one like Grant, a Finance person that actually cares about people. I can just imagine poor old Nicola rolling her eyes.

While there’s much here that’s hard to understand this at least makes one thing clear.

With Nicola’s attitude to the media, and the undesirability of them covering what she’s doing, it does rather explain why Melissa Lee has been sitting on her hands doing the best part of “bugger all”, not my first choice of words, as the traditional media head Titanic-like for the bottom of the ocean while she hesitates to throw a life preserver in their direction.

Why on earth would a party that doesn’t like independent coverage lift a finger to help the media?

That way leads to facts, and feelings, and all sorts of things. Better to focus on the vibe. “Look here’s Christopher Luxon, so heavily filtered it doesn’t even look like him, grinning like an idiot on TikTok.”

Isn’t that better than sitting down and reading about the human impact of job losses or evidence that the government’s policies don’t work?

It certainly is for Nicola and Christopher.

So are we all going to get with the programme? Don’t ask, don’t tell? Don’t question, don’t complain? Can’t we do that for Willis and Luxon? They have a mandate for this remember, even the bits they didn’t tell us about.

Look, I know some of you are probably yelling at your phones or your laptops “hell no, not in a million years - we’re going to shout it from the bloody rooftops”, but we have to be fair.

What were National supposed to do before the election - actually tell us what they were going to do?

Come on now, if you were being fair minded you’d probably say I guess not. I mean it does rather look as if they’re just making it up as they go along. As if there wasn’t a plan that they could’ve communicated. Best just to think of it as having given them a blank cheque - that we trust them to have the best interests of our country at heart.

Or, if you were a tad more cynical, you might say the reason they didn’t tell us what they were going to do was because people wouldn’t have voted for it. Not enough to win a mandate anyway.

So when the journalists asked Nicola before the election how she’d pay for her tax cuts, which nobody, other than a certain consultancy in Wellington, could work out. She simply mumbled about cutting down on waste, but not impacting services.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she is committed to finding savings through backroom staff only. Robert Kitchin / The Post.

You could hardly have expected her to look down the camera and tell the truth. Can you imagine?

“I’m going to bleed the public sector dry. Every area will be targeted, with job cuts across the board. Every ministry, every service, cut to the bone to pay for tax cuts. The ones for property investors alone will cost billions - so brace yourself New Zealand, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me. Which is not at all, if you’re wondering.”

Probably not much of a vote winner.

In fact there are a lot of things they could’ve mentioned before the election that would’ve sounded bad. But you can’t expect them to just be open about those - that would impact their ability to secure a mandate, which seems unfair.

So what do you think? Should we just quieten down, accept that bad things will happen to other people and hope it’s not us?

Because if we continue down the current road of yelling about every injustice, highlighting every moral, or environmental, outrage then we might spoil Nicola’s enjoyment in seeing her dreams fulfilled.

And where would the kindness be in that?

I’m sure you’ll all do what’s best. Just remember that Nicola would prefer it if you didn’t talk too much about what she’s doing. 🙂