Letter To Luxon.

An open letter from Gerard Otto.

Some of you might know Gerard Otto (G), and his G News platform. This morning he wrote a letter to Christopher Luxon which I particularly enjoyed, and with his agreement I’m sharing it with you in this guest newsletter.

If you’d like to make a contribution to support Gerard’s work you can find the details on his Facebook page. Right, without further ado, and not a moment too soon…

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Dear Christopher Luxon

You said you've lost count of how many people told you they would leave the country if we had a Labour/Green/TPM government after this election.

The truth is about two million New Zealanders who you refer to as bottom feeders could not afford the expensive ticket and relocation costs - and your miserable tax cut of between $2 and $25 per week would not help them really.

You're going to punish them hard and some of your supporters can't wait for that.

So I feel pretty confident you were talking to people who could afford to leave New Zealand and who lacked empathy towards their fellow countrymen. People who, were too busy and deeply misguided that you'd actually solve things in health, education, law and order and with inflation, or racists who resented Māori, sexists who were fed up with Jacinda's lot, Climate Change deniers, or folk who were rich but not the sharpest tools in the shed.

Some wanted change for changes sake to settle some grudge they had with the pandemic response, but let's be clear about one thing.

You've lost count because you were never counting and you are terrible with numbers. So terrible, you've no idea how bad Nicola looks every time she waves a bit of paper around and says that's our modelling on a single line at the bottom of the page.

It's embarrassing and Jack pointed and laughed out loud.

Dumb people didn't get it, heck they were not even watching, but you had to hide those numbers and all the slap dash assumptions and then double down on that. You were a laughing stock, not a salesman's arse.

Every time you appeared on Jack's show you were hopeless, your inflationary tax cuts did not add up and you never could prove how non Covid related government spending could ever add up to be sufficiently large that it would make a major difference to inflation.

Yet you comfortably lied to all those people about how it did - you spread misinformation to anyone who would listen to you about economic vandalism - blaming the government for everything - and you travelled the country telling exaggerated, false stories, spinning the same one liners, about "getting back on track" and "getting things done".

Truth is you won't help those fools one bit.

You'll take ten years to build a hospital to train some doctors and tweak a couple of immigration settings, buy a handful of new cancer drugs - and you say that will solve all our health problems - end of Health Crisis. Cool story bro. Only idiots fall for that one.

You say you'll go about meeting your Climate Commitments "differently" which means "the same inaction" we've seen from conservative governments for thirty years as you sit on your hands and wait. Wow clap clap for getting things done...not.

You have some slogans to address crime, you'll "Back our police" and "tackle the gangs" but the truth is your gang patch policy is not going to change anything and you are not going to get anywhere by being dumb about crime instead of smart. You dismissed the science and the evidence and opted for rhetoric. You won't invest more - you'll likely make cuts to help pay for those tax cuts.

In the end dairy owners will be left still saying "enough is enough" as Mark Mitchell goes to ground hiding from the media again like he did in 2017.

Your tax cuts will give people earning under $46,000 a huge $2 a week and these are the people who need it most. Clearly half of your badly “targeted tax cuts” don't go to people who need the money if they say they will “just save it.” Where is the crisis in that? It's inflationary Chris - you are just prolonging the crisis. You want to bring $20 Billion more into the country via house sales which means inflation is higher for longer.

You like to fool people by saying “per fortnight that's $4”. No wait - if you have a two year old - add something else.

Your blessed squeezed middle will get up to $25 per week but most get less than that - and at what cost?

First home buyers will be pushed out of the market and replaced by property investors, rates and rents will go up. Online gambling will have to increase fourfold and you'll rob the Climate fund - entirely so no action can happen. That's all before we talk about sacking so many thousands of good people and cutting public services so deeply that it makes life bloody hell for those trying to deliver the services and the public waiting for them.

Dumping good people on the scrap heap is you Chris. That's what you do in your world as job seeker numbers are set to rise with every vote you get.

Your tax cuts are badly targeted and unaffordable, face it, that's a rubbish policy in these economic times. Foolish and selfish and you've been incompetent and dishonest about this.

Your determination to help Māori rests on the assumption you know best about what is best for Māori - not them, so you are not going to allow them to have a 50/50 say over their own health. You want them to live 7 years less than the rest - and want to get back to what has never worked. You are okay with "Māori Providers" in the public service, but rule out co-governance which is "shared decision making". You make no sense and represent all that is wrong with colonialism all over again.

Christopher you made no sense about the pandemic when you said we messed up in the second year simply because other countries were coming out of Covid before New Zealand. The truth was they had been devastated - with Covid raging through their communities and so much more death than we experienced here - so you decided to fool people and tap into that resentment. The vaccine roll out in Australia was about the same as it was in New Zealand precisely because both nations had done so well - and we needed for that rollout to get over 90% before it was safe to lessen protection with a mutating variant springing up and making National look like morons.

You blamed waiting lists on the government, by ignoring the very real impacts on surgery that the pandemic forced upon us - and dumb people lapped it up.

You went around small towns claiming we were the only nation in the OECD who was in a recession and demonised Grant Robertson saying you will not be lectured by him - but there was no recession Christopher. No - you were telling porkies again and morons swallowed it whole.

Now you are fearful, very afraid - that something might upset your slim lead in the polls so you are busy making appeals for people to vote for your bad deal, your empty promises, your slogans and all the harm you will bring to New Zealand.

Lucky for you our media have given you a soft ride in order to make money out of a close race with higher ratings while they bleed money - but looks like they overcooked the bias and now can't pull it back. Imagine if you'd been held to account for your deceptions in 2022 and 2023 rather than only in the past two weeks.

Clearly you are not fit to govern because you are too dishonest while in opposition. You should not be believed because you have proven you are full of it many times. You lack the smarts and experience we need right now - and the cost of your one trick pony tax cut is poison for far too many New Zealanders.

Do the right thing and step down Christopher Luxon. Admit your tax plan is a disastrous election bribe and that neither you nor Nicola Willis have any experience whatsoever as Ministers of anything.

I see Nicola has been delaying her fiscal plan to give voters no time to scrutinise it before overseas voting starts. She blames Grant Robertson and resents the legitimate public scrutiny, screeching like a banshee while you stay silent cos it's all so embarrassing to admit the truth... I mean what a disaster she is.

A Labour/Green/TPM government is really what New Zealand needs now because all their policies are fully costed, inflation will be down to 3.9% by July 2024 without you, RAM RAIDs are coming down without you, GDP is growing without you, net debt ratios are some of the lowest in the world, we'd love free dental, free public transport, free prescriptions and low unemployment too.

I think you should do the right thing - tell the truth to voters - admit your mistakes and stop the lies and hiding.

We've got a damned good government who have proven their worth in the most difficult of times.

Voters need to wake up to that and what harm your empty BS will bring upon this country.

Yours sincerely

G 😀

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This was G’s nomination for an accompanying song. It is certainly appropriate, but some readers might find it a bit disturbing. Marilyn can sometimes be that way.