Don’t you sometimes wish they’d just tell the truth? No matter how abhorrent or ugly, just straight up tell us the truth?
C’mon guys, what you’re doing is bad enough anyway, pretending you’re not is only adding insult to injury.
Instead of all this bollocks about the Smokefree changes being to do with an imaginary black market, or whatever, just tell us the real reason you’re doing what you’re doing.
Not because you’re evil bad guys and you can, so you did. That might be true, but it’s not the reason.
Not because you don’t care about bottom feeders who make bad choices, and Big Tobacco is giving you lots of donations.
Or even because Winnie got pissed at bowls and told his mates he’d make sure ciggies didn’t get taxed any further, and they could still buy them from the local shop.
The simple truth is that you identified an untapped voting block of Dairy owners, who make a fair chunk of their income from selling tobacco products. I assume they must, why else would they risk all these ram raids stocking them if they weren’t coining it?
The businesses most impacted by the Smokefree legislation, perhaps with the exception of undertakers, were dairy owners. Dairy & Business Owners Group Inc chairman, Sunny Kaushal, has spent the last year campaigning for National and this is the payback.
It’s not a great look but at least we get it, and you’re hardly the first government to give away legislation for votes.
Come on, you didn’t think we believed all those ram raid photo ops, pontificating about how terrible the Labour government was before the election, which seem to have disappeared off the news since, were about a real crime wave, did you?
Far from things spiralling out of control there were actually fewer* ram raids this year than last year. Not more - the opposite.
* Police data shows 407 ram-raids were identified between January 2023 to September 2023, the number is on track to decrease this year from its peak in 2022, which saw 707 ram-raids recorded.
It’s honourable in a way, you believe in a meritocracy. Mauri mahi, mauri ora.
Sorry I appreciate we’re cracking down on that sort of thing, how about "Do the mahi, get the treats"? That’s easy eh? Sunny did the mahi, now his members get the treats.
Oh bugger, right, there’s still that mahi word. Well it translates as through work, we prosper. That better? Thought you’d like that, although while we’re on this whole honesty kick maybe you should say through your work, we prosper, eh?
It’s kind of hard at this point to tell whether National are echoing Sunny’s words, or vice versa. Perhaps they wrote them together?
Meanwhile on Friday another high profile figure, Steve Maharey, who was in trouble earlier this year for expressing his opinion, resigned. Seemingly jumping before being pushed, or being asked to back policies he disagreed with.
Once again we learn that if you’re in the public service, you’re doing something to help society, then you can just shut up with your opinions and mind your own business.
But if you are the representative of dairy owners, and you have concerns about not being able to sell cigarettes to young people, then you can fill your boots and openly campaign for the National Party.
If you think I’ve been a bit harsh on Sunny, check out this little beauty. Julian Batchelor or Don Brash would’ve approved.
It’s the same deal with the Government's policy to lodge a reservation against adopting World Health Organization (WHO) regulations. Tell us why you’re really doing it, because the reasons you’re giving make no sense.
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