On Coster's Covid Convoy Strategy

Over the weekend, I tapped out the following:

"In what's going to be my most controversial take this month ... I actually think that Police Commissioner Andrew Coster's apparent strategy of "this'll go down easier if we just let the whole thing implode of its own accord rather than go in swinging" might be entirely (if painfully - for Wellington) correct."

At the time, it seemed a statement against the grain. Hashtags demanding Coster's resignation were trending on Twitter. Wellingtonians (even the ones not on Twitter) seemed almost as aggrieved at the police for a lack of action against the protest as they were against the protest itself. The sentiments advanced by some of the commentariat in the Sunday (and Saturday) papers seemed to suggest they weren't alone in this - except, of course, for the curious fact that various of those media mouthpieces seemed to be sotto-voce cheering on the protest specifically because it was causing optics difficulty for the Government and our Covid-19 public health response. 

However, I had cautious cause for optimism on Coster's behalf. Saturday had seen a rather dramatic occurrence - the revelation that some ... unthinking protester had chosen to turn the nation's Cenotaph into an impromptu ablution block for the protest campsite. This was received in pretty much all quarters about as well as one might expect - as if there is one thing pretty much every New Zealander not of some sort of Anarchist proclivity tends to agree upon, it's the sacrosanct status of the ANZAC legacy. 

I sensed, therefore, that this was likely a bit of a turning point in terms of the 'momentum' (in)surging into the mainstream of the protest narrative. 

And also noted that it seemed plausible Coster's strategy had been drawn from that of Napoleon - who famously remarked one should "never interrupt your opponent when he's in the middle of making a mistake." 

Subsequent developments seem to have confirmed this - with news stories out about the same time discussing how a citizen-media team who'd gone to visit and film the protest in order to show them to be non-violent ... had been assaulted and "beaten to a pulp"; whilst the next day brought an extended press release from the groups at the center of the Convoy effectively stating that they had little actual control over the protest (to the point that they couldn't even ensure access for trucks to service the portaloos at the site), and that movements toward 'negotiation' were a "deflection". 

Monday continued this trend, with the 'moral high ground' almost certainly not being held by the side throwing its own excrement about the place. 

However, while it's certainly one thing to observe the 'momentum' of the movement seemingly fizzle in the harsh glare of public scrutiny of what they're actually about and like (at least, on the 'fringes') - this isn't quite the same thing as doing something meaningful about the escalating sprawl of tents, cars, and placards which have been steadily encircling further and further around both Parliament and Wellington's key central city governmental locations. Particularly in light of the shuffling around of cars and other potential obstacles which had been taking place toward the end of last week by the protesters in order to entrench themselves further against anticipated towing action.

That, instead, was provided via the rollout of a series of concrete barricades pre-Dawn on Monday Morning. 

Which we may surmise to be a rather interesting development for the 'Non-Violent Enforcement' approach. One of simply giving the protesters what they want.

"We've barricaded ourselves in!"

"Yes. You're barricaded in."

"HEY! YOU CAN'T JUST BARRICADE US IN LIKE THAT!"

"You barricaded yourselves in - we're just agreeing with you."

As it happens, this concords rather well with something I'd been thinking about a few days earlier - namely, what one does when one finds one's self having to raise a siege in more conventional conflict terms. 

I'll spare you the extended military history discursions that conjured in my mind about this point and just skip straight to the answer I'd arrived at - you place the siege, itself, under siege. 

Now at this point, we are going to sidestep for a moment into discussing just how this whole 'Protest' ethos appears to have come into being. Via a handy metaphor provisioned for us through the realms of physics. Which, yes, also helps to explain what's going to happen next and why Coster's strategy is likely to work. 

My general typology for what's been going on both politically and physically is ... a gas. Now, gas differs from liquids and solids, insofar as it can be compressed into a smaller area - which raises pressure as the molecules go pinging bouncing off the walls faster.

The situation we've witnessed in NZ politics over the past year and a half - has seen the 'space' various people or political forces feel they occupy .. reduced quite markedly. Because Labour and Labour-support(ish) has expanded so massively - along with a seriously impressive degree of support for the accompanying Covid-19 public health measures they've presided over. 

While some have adapted to this by effectively 'splitting the difference' and attempting to co-occupy (er..poor choice of words) space Labour is perceived to hold - others have adapted to a self-perceived shrinking habitat by going gas - and pinging off walls with escalating speed. 

A good example of this is probably to be found by looking at the National Party from time to time. After a number of 'false starts', they realized that attempting to carve meaningful votes off Labour by pushing for 'business as usual' to resume as swiftly as possible, or for that matter, by heading into conspiratorial territory ... was not really a good starter. And so they instead shifted to a general attack strategy (as exemplified by Chris Bishop) of taking something the Government was going to do eventually, and complaining that it hadn't been done faster or better in some fashion. 

That's that 'splitting the difference' and 'co-occupying space' approach. 

The other avenue, however, is exemplified by former National MP Matt King, who's effectively become a billboard for 'the path not taken' by going from overtly opposing in both social media post and deed, the personal distancing rules that were in place in 2020 while he was still a Member of Parliament ... through to quitting National in order to return to Parliament in a decidedly other capacity a few days ago as a would-be leader of the Convoy movement, following a rather piquant interview with the NZ Herald about some of his more curious beliefs in related areas. 

Phrased another way and more succinctly - a lot of these guys feel like they're increasingly marginalized, and so they're 'acting out' precisely because of it.

Now all of that's utterly uncontroversial in the political sense .. but it gets interesting in the physical sense.

Because at present, there's apparently 30+ groups involved in this thing, plus a lot of people who aren't part of one. I have no idea how many 'factions' there might be, but we do know various of these don't like each other & have confronted each other from time to time.

Provided the protest had significant space it could 'move into' and expand, that presented less of an issue. You could set up another semi-hub for your particular crew of people just by pitching a tent somewhere less congested or parking up down the road.

However, by significantly restricting the available area for this kind of activity to, effectively, that which has already been claimed ... it introduces a resourcing constraint (one of several if doughnut-trucks can't get in, figuratively speaking) for an already overpopulated habitat. 

What does overpopulation in a resource / territory constrained zone produce? Conflict.

What was there already? Conflict.

What has the revelation one protest-leader (former NewCons leader Leighton Baker) was aware of and engaged with by the police about the barricades going in ahead of time contributed to? Conflict.

What will likely cause protesters to feel 'it isn't fun' and pack up? Conflict.

Internal conflict. Replacing that joyous sense that you're all part of some big movement swimming in the same direction, with the sense that instead you've somehow found yourself in amidst three-to-three-dozen mistrustful camps that spend almost as much time sniping at each other as they do at the Government. 

So, to quote me some Sun Tzu - "Your opponent is Choleric - Irritate Him".

Or, with these guys "Your opponent is likely really keen on Conspiracy Theorizing. Give him a reason to distrust the hell out of his neighbour / establishing leadership".

The concrete barricades are also good for another purpose. 

The protest-groups' press-release on Sunday indicated they were already having notable difficulty ensuring that vehicles were able to come and go to carry out essential things like servicing the portaloos. The rather radical solution of physically disposing of the human waste in question by flinging it at Her Majesty's Constabulary evidently proving inadequate to the task of shoveling sufficient quotients for the hundreds of people on site. 

Vehicles looking to get in to the Convoy's occupation space are now no longer going to be able to come-and-go as convenient. The police control the access-points in. Those are their barricades. As an associate observed - that means they now have 'Leverage'. 

Up to the Weekend, Coster's strategy was what appeared to be a valiant (if flawed) effort at what I call the coke-bottle analogy. 

You know the one.

When confronted with a coke bottle that's been shaken up, there are two ways of handling the problem. 

You can twist off the lid completely - resulting in a sticky mess everywhere. All the pressure that's built up explodes outward all at once. Or - you twist off the cap a bit at a time - allowing pressure to come out gradually.

Coster had resiled from the level of force required to twist the cap off all at once, quite understandably, because apart from the possible question as to whether he had sufficient resources in place to actually forcibly evict the occupation once it got past the first day or two ... such a spectacle would almost certainly just have lead to a bigger problem elsewhere or elsewhen. The protesters themselves overtly pointed to the 120+ arrests on the Thursday (the 10th of February) as an effective 'galvanizer' of their own internal cohesion and a useful recruitment tool through footage of same going up online. 

In other words - their 'narrative' had found its ogre, its antagonist ... and continuing to play that role would be continuing to play into both their hands and that narrative position, strengthening same. 

His preference, it would seem, when it became clear how well the previous approach was going (i.e. insufficient force being deployed to clear the protest, very sufficient force being deployed to look antagonistic in so doing) - was to go for the latter option. The gentle and delayed release of pressure through smaller cap-twists. 

Except it ran into the obvious issue that pressure wasn't actually being decreased. People continued to arrive at the protest, and as mentioned above, it would seem that a semi-deliberate strategy of moving to encircle Parliament and various important sites in the area had gotten well underway. 

To return to our metaphor - it does little good to gently twist the cap of the coke-bottle part-way around if somebody is still shaking the coke bottle the whole time and somehow adding more coke into the mix as well. 

The barricades - those of the Police rather than those of the protesters - are, therefore, a welcome 'breathing room'.

They are not, in and of themselves, a full-scale solution. However they do facilitate a gradual de-escalation by hopefully helping to constrain the mean level of 'new coke' flowing in; whilst also creating internal conditions that will potentially encourage some people inside to start flowing back out at their own pace. 

And whilst it's very easy to cast a baton-equipped police officer as an 'antagonist' in one's own preferred flavouring of post-modern morality play ... it's a lot harder to vent the same kind of animus toward an inanimate cement block. 

At every stage of this pandemic, New Zealand has somehow managed to come out the 'least-worst' (indeed, in various cases, actually rather well - our life expectancy going up, for one example; unemployment hitting an absolute historic low, another) of much of the world with what we've attempted and accomplished. 

It hasn't been through luck (although yes, most certainly, that's helped in places and in parts), but rather through the people making decisions making decent and well-informed ones. Eventually, in some cases, but eventually nonetheless. 

Andrew Coster came to national prominence not for being appointed Police Commissioner - but rather, for being attacked by the Opposition as some sort of 'Wokester' and adhering to a doctrine (apparently known in the Anglosphere and practiced in various forms since the 1800s, not that you'd know it) known as 'policing by consent'. 

For the longest time, it had seemed that he was a man whose prevailing principles had seemed prospectively ill-fitting for the circumstances he had found himself in. Or maybe that's just what the media-political spin sought to suggest. 

Yet Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man - it may just be that he and his approach might prove the unexpected exact right instrument for handling this current Covid Convoy quagmire. 

He would appear to have already headed off the kinds of escalation which some overseas countries have experienced with their own local 'Convoy' occurrences (or other anti-Governmental pseudo-uprisings) - and for that, I think we should be grateful. 

Will he be the man to preside over what brings about the Convoy's further withering into wittering obscurity and eventual disapparation? 

Well, we'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow (and the next day) brings.

On The Impending Media Push To Present Parliamentary Protesters As Ordinary

The excerpt in the image below comes from part of the lead story in the weekend's Sunday Star Times.

It paints a picture of the protesters currently occupying Parliament's lawn in decidedly more nuanced terms than the protestors often seem to believe the media interested in doing. 




Now, the reason that I find this interesting is because of the context of this presentation. Both in terms of where it was in that day's newspaper, but also how it represents a bit of a 'crystalization' of a trend for media portrayal of the protest. 

What do I mean by this? 

Well, we'll start with the second point first. Over the past few days there's been a definite emphasis on the part of some commentators to push the line that the protesters, while they might appear to be a rambunctious rabble of general conspiracy-theory toting ne'er-do-wells ... "actually have a point". 

Just what that "point" is may vary somewhat from mouthpiece to mouthpiece, but effectively seems to boil down to "the Government's done the wrong thing", with a specific flavouring of "vaccine mandates, Traffic Light Settings, and other Omicron-era control measures are too restrictive / actively harmful", and a side-order of "time to start Learning To Live With The Virus". 

Except, of course, not 'learning to live with the virus' in the way that we'd been intending to, nor in the way that Singapore et co are attempting to manage it. You get the idea. 

Now how much of said 'flavouring' depends quite strongly upon the individual columnist or commentator. Some basically just want to go for the 'lightly seasoned' option of presenting it as being a Government comms issue that's 'legitimate' to voice opposition to - others want to go rather further.

This brings us to my second point - the first one I'd mentioned, around where this charming excerpt was to be found within the context of Sunday's Star Times. 

Elsewhere on the page was a story about how, surprise surprise, the Government's Covid-control measures had allegedly 'gone too far' and were now actively 'counterproductive'. 

The 'meat' of this piece was provided via perspectives from two people representing rather different groups: somebody from the hospitality sector, lamenting the manner in which 'fear' was contributing to people not patronizing restaurants and the like; and a doctor, talking about how understandable caution from people about going out into the community with Omicron circulating had lead to a rather significant reduction in the number of people making appointments to see their GP. 

Predictably, the front page highlight talking about the article lead with the picture and soundbite from the doctor - a public health perspective, and a not unwarranted one. And then spent only a smaller portion toward the end of the actual article itself on what he had to say - instead giving over its mainstay to the unrelated commentary around the retail sector suffering due to people not wanting to go out and socialize in the midst of a pandemic. A classic bait-and-switch - and attempt to conflate a commercial issue with a public health one (because yes, people not engaging with primary healthcare providers can contribute to rather more important problems than a bar being underpatronized). 

Now, we've been down these styles of cycleway many, many times before over the course of the pandemic. 

This is partially why we so frequently find heads of business associations, and prominent figures of the hospitality industry given such prominence in media pieces talking about the pandemic response. Because it's one of the areas where you can actually point to and say "see all this saving lives? It's got a Cost Attached." 

Various media have also been very keen to try and present the situation in more 'popular' terms - not as something between small and sectorally interested groups against the dominant public will, but rather as the general public being divided in amidst itself. 

You can see this in the reporting in the Herald from 2020, for example, discussing our then second lockdown. They'd declared Auckland to be seriously "divided" over the decision to extend the Level 3 phase. 

Except when you looked closer at it ..., and as I said about the time - 

"You might be forgiven for thinking that this meant somewhere around a fifty fifty split of opinion on the matter.

Here’s the actual split:

75% of Aucklanders thought that the extension of lockdown was “appropriate”. This was made up of 56% who were simply fine with the extension – and a further 19% who wanted the lockdown to go longer.

Meanwhile, that 25% of opponents was made up of 14% for a shorter lockdown, and 9% for the lockdown shouldn’t have been initiated at all.

That’s three-to-one support for the lockdown. And yet somehow this is a serious degree of “division”.

Meanwhile, New Zealanders overall supported the most recent Lockdown by a ratio of more than four to one – 62% in favour of the lockdown we had, 19% in favour of an even further extended lockdown, 10% for a shorter lockdown, and only 6% for no lockdown at all.

Technically a 3-1 majority for Lockdown means “divided” , sure – as does a 4-1 majority.

But it sure does sound rather different when you phrase it like that, frame it like that, rather than OVERWHELMING MAJORITY SUPPORTS THE GOVERNMENT’S COVID-19 MANAGEMENT”.

So how does all of that pertain to this description of the protestors on Parliament's front lawn?

Simple. 

At the moment, the protestors are a very vocal 'battering ram'. They won't, by themselves, force the Government to abandon sensible Covid-19 control measures. What they can be 'weaponized' to do is exactly the same thing that the Brian Tamaki MC'd 'freedom rally' shenanigans of a few months ago can be co-opted for - attempting to make very strident opposition to said "let's actually live like we're in a pandemic" measures seem like something that's an ordinary person perspective. Not one that's effectively relegated to a few hundred people on a patch of grass who are outnumbered by an order of magnitude every day by the number of Kiwis choosing to get a Booster. 

Why? 

Because, as the Sunday Star itself  told you on the very same page - New Zealanders continuing to take the virus seriously is imposing an economic cost on some business owners. 

It's also continuing to considerably buoy the Labour party's popularity - and keep National down in the low 30% range. People remember. 

So, if you want to 'circuit-break' Labour seeming a champion of ordinary New Zealanders, our health and welfare ... presenting some very ordinary New Zealanders in amidst the very-hard-to-ignore decidedly abnormal ones at the Parliament protest is an ideal way to do this.

The mind extrapolates on its own, and places things in their own kind of order - conveying a sense that there's some broad 'consensus' of both ordinary people and ordinary business-owners gradually coalescing in unity against the Ardern-led Government, mask requirements and vaccination mandates and a 'climate of fear' about going out for dinner etc.

It doesn't have to be true. It just has to look like it might be plausible. And then the hope is that events start taking on the characteristics plotted out for them all of their own accord. 

Because the previous approach, of media and media-platformed talking heads, basically shrilly scolding the general public for taking the pandemic too seriously and being too keen on Labour in significant consequence of that, has not worked. 

And in the absence of a genuine mass movement to overturn the Government or its Covid-control measures ... you make do with what you've got instead.

A few hundred people who've managed to 'Annoy Wellington', most definitely ... and suitably 'airbrushed' to highlight the less odious elements within the general protestor milieu. 

Will it work?

That remains to be seen. 

However, even though it is situated in amidst nearly half a dozen more 'actively empathizable' vox-pops, the guy claiming that Covid-19 was some sort of "worldwide scam directed by the United Nations" does somewhat undercut the notion that "we're not crazies", as another protestor tearfully sought to emphasize. 

But I would cautiously suspect that over the next few weeks, and one hopes that won't be how long the occupation of Parliament's lawn drags on for, we'll see an escalating tide of media and commentariat 'contributions' which seek to equivocate the other side of the protest (you know, the ones intimidating and even egging schoolgirls in masks and spitting at bus-drivers) in favour of claiming it's 'ordinary New Zealanders' just seeking to do entirely ordinary things. And who have a 'right to be heard'. 

A right to eat out at hospitality venues, too, one presumes. 

Or maybe that's going to become presented as more of a 'duty' - something mandatory for the rest of us, whether we feel particularly comfortable going out at this time or not. 

On Claims Of Christianity Being "Singled Out" Via Probing Of Luxon

 There is currently some conversation around whether Luxon is being 'singled out' for his Christian faith. Or, rather, whether Christianity is being singled out - and is an 'acceptable target'.

It's an issue, sure - a religion is, implicitly, a set of values and adherence is resculpting the world around one to be in some measure more in accordance with same. Whether that's just in our own personal life, or out more broadly in the lives of others and society, the nation, as a whole. 

However, here's the thing. The rhetorical question posed by at least one Nat is whether we think Luxon would be getting the same critical probing if he were Muslim. The implicit claim, as I say, is that it's 'acceptable' to 'pick on' Christianity - and would not be so to similarly scrutinize a 'minority' religion.

Which leaves aside, for a start, that the particular rather evangelical flavouring of Christianity that Luxon's previously been affiliated with is, itself, a minority religion on our shores. 

And second, the very strong probability that *were* Luxon somehow a Muslim, the overarching level of potentially harsh scrutiny would, if anything, likely be worse. If, perhaps, 'worse' significantly because of those other quarters it would now be coming from at greater heat.

As somebody pointed out, though, the prospects of the National Party acquiring a Muslim leader in the near or even intermediate term future are ... not exactly high - and in no small part because the cultural values of National (and a reasonable swathe of the rest of the country) are much more comfortable with a Christian leader than one of any other proclivity of faith. 

Nevertheless, there's some perhaps precedency value in the experiences of persons of other religions in other Anglosphere polities around the globe. 

Close observation of certain of these means that I can genuinely state that if either major party had a prominently Hindu leader, I believe they'd get a pretty heavy grilling over it. It'd start out with "So, do you support Hindutva Fascism And Modi" and work out to "you oppose eating cows. Surely, for a beef exporting nation such as New Zealand, this is unpatriotic due to farming?"

It would be accompanied by commentary in some quarters about how we shouldn't have "Demon-Worshipping" figures leading our nation. If you think I'm joking about this - it literally happened to Tulsi Gabbard during her electoral campaign efforts to represent Hawaii (a reasonably tolerant state) in Congress. Editorial cartoons would be making Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom references. 

Meanwhile, closer to home - about a year ago, then-newly minted NZ Labour MP Gaurav Sharma was attacked by a journalist who claimed he was giving voice to Hindu "fascism" ... by speaking Sanskrit in our nation's Parliament. 

So as I say - if we wound up with an overtly Hindu MP leading one of our major political parties, I feel pretty confident in asserting that they'd get at least as much of a 'going over' as Luxon is about his particular shade of Christianity. 

Something which, again, probably isn't much to do with Luxon being Christian in general terms - as the specific sort of Christianity which he's previously been associated with. 

To be clear about this - I think it's perfectly reasonable for the electorate to want to 'get to know' the values and beliefs of somebody they might consider voting to support in the future. There's ample room for probing questions about a whole host of viewpoints. 

The issue arises when instead of 'probing questions' that seek to give us out here in the Cheap Seats an opportunity to understand what the elected representative may or may not do if given (further) power ... we're instead treated to a televised turkey-shoot wherein 'questions' are merely veils for invective and jeering. 

In that circumstance - nobody really learns anything, and it just encourages a lack of transparency all around.

With somebody like Jami-Lee Ross being probed on his and his party's Covid-19 attitude, it's arguably a different story - there, it was reasonably plain that a grift was on, and in that rather prominent post-Election interview, Tova O'Brien's ditching of the usual journalistic standards / approach effectively came across as expressing much of a nation's boiled-over frustration with the man and his sidekick. 

But that's a door hitting a man on the way out. Something which, to be sure, with National's 'revolving door' leadership scheme of late, may be a somewhat relevant concept for some of its lineup. 

Luxon's on his way in - as National Party Leader, at any rate. Enquiring about something that's obviously very significant to him and which may have some bearing upon his political behavior in that role isn't 'singling out' and victimizing a man for his faith ... or, for that matter, engaging in a witch-hunt of anybody of avowed Christian proclivity in our nation's politics. 

Having said that, it's certainly possible to do this in better and/or worse ways - but the evident claim that this is 'just' a Christian thing ... and that no other person of faith would find themselves facing some (potentially rather severe) level of scrutiny simply doesn't hold up.

Luxon's Christianity is being probed not because it's Christianity - nor, to a point, because it's a smaller and more forthright branching thereof. Rather, it's because it's Luxon's. If it were Luxon's Islam, or Luxon's Scientology, or other expressions of faith he'd lived ardently by - it'd be the same. 

But, of course, it's very convenient to claim there's an Inquisition going on to unfairly single out Christians for drumming out of public life with as a pre-emptive distraction just in case some ... unpalatable responses come up to the aforementioned probing of Luxon's beliefs in question. 

On A Critical Comment Towards The Beatification Of Colin Powell

 

Look, I don't like Trump. There are quite a long list of reasons why. But this kind of thing is a large part of why he won significant support in various places. Because he isn't fettered by a Consensus like everybody he was up against. And sure, that manifests often as crass if not outright offensive stuff. And "offensive" here also means up to and including the laws of physics and reality itself, upon occasion.

Yet you see this sort of thing happen fairly frequently in American politics and the trickle-down therefrom which we get out here in the rest of the Anglosphere and thence World at large.

Somebody who ... did some fairly dramatically wrong things (and it's not just about Iraq - take a look at Powell's "investigation" of Mai Lai, for instance) - and in death, all of that is insta-washed away. A beatification occurs.

It's a process we all see happen - and, rightly or wrongly, any criticism of as it's happening usually gets shut down by the perhaps understandable dictum that we do not speak ill of the dead.

Some take that further, of course, and you get Ireland issuing an official telegram of condolence when a certain German leader died, but that is another matter for another time.

Now I'm not saying that it's right to suddenly start cheering and celebrating when a man in his eighties dies of Covid-19 related complications and a compromised immune system. It isn't. Any harm he could have inflicted was, by this point, seriously limited - it'd already occurred a long time aforehand.

And the legacy of that kind of conduct he'd lent his legitimacy to - well, that lives on long after its mortal standard-bearer no longer does. If and when that dies, there'll certainly be cause for quite some jubilation.

Yet I do suggest that given epitaphs and eulogies appear to 'set the consensus' for how history is going to treat somebody for the near- or even medium-term future ... well, some 'critical appraisal' of that element, and the 'hagiographizing' which post-mortem seemingly inevitably takes place these days ... is not necessarily incorrect to explore.

Which doesn't mean I agree with Trump - generally or otherwise.

But I do think that here, even jeeringly phrased, the guy's got a point. 

On Jacinda Being "Missing In Action" Apparently

 

It occurs that Judith Collins' attack on Jacinda for being "missing in action" yesterday due to not being inside the Beehive Theatrette at 13:00 ... could use some punctuation. Specifically, a comma. Should read "Missing, In Action" - or perhaps even a dash: "Missing - In Action".

Because instead of dropping everything to front a press conference several hundred KM away, the PM was continuing her sustained effort at bolstering vaccination rates on the East Coast. In areas that have been underserved by previous health investment, and which have been worrisomely under-covered by the vaccine rollout thus far.

Some might suggest it's a PR move. And to that I can only say an enthusiastic "Yes." It is literally a PR move. Public Relations. Going out there and engaging with a swathe of the public, in a bid to facilitate their engagement with a particular policy. That being the public health policy which is absolutely vital for them and us.

If it's a "PR move" then it is the best kind of PR move - one which is actually done for the public, in public, and both for and in the public interest rather than being purely theater (Beehive -erette variety, or otherwise).

I have been - I feel rather understandably - critical of the Government's communications this past week, and some of their apparent decision-making as well.

Yet as an exercise in comms, and something which is seemingly irreducibly Kiwi - having the actual Prime Minister turn up to personally do the Government Communication, in your street, neighbourhood, and community ... well, the only time I could see Judith Collins even attempting to do something like this and actually being 'on-theme' would be on October 31st after dark at your doorstep. 

On Brian Tamaki As Charismatic Frontman For The Commentariat's Anti-Covid Control Agenda

Yesterday, everybody's favourite opportunity for a Monty Python title-drop, Brian Tamaki, held a jamboree in Auckland's Domain. On one level, it was an anti-Covid-19 control measure protest, clearly inspired by efforts in Melbourne over the past few months. On another level, it was another opportunity for those more broadly disdainful for our Government to get together and have a bit of a tractor-in-lieu-of-traction fest. Replete with an actual tractor and a trailer-load of the agricultural output that was apparently somehow under threat. I assume from something other than Covid, and probably not potato-blight. 

Now, don't get me wrong - on one level, the whole thing's pretty impressive. Tamaki's political fortunes have never been especially potent ... he's always managed to take a potentially salient starting-point and then over-egg himself in the face to the point that the outreach into broader New Zealand seemingly-inevitably comes to naught. That might sound silly on my part - but cast your mind back to mid-2019, when you had any number of people coming out and saying that they couldn't believe they were saying this but they agreed with Brian Tamaki on x hate-speech or other gesture going a bit far. Up until, of course, Tamaki himself took things too far ... and that potential support-vector evaporated handily. 

A large part of the reason why Tamaki (and, to be fair, Mrs Tamaki) comes unstuck is because what he says runs into the fact that most of New Zealand either isn't listening - or, more to the point, is actually listening and is frankly unimpressed through to outright aghast at what they may so happen to hear. 

What he needs, in short, is an 'interpretation service' in much the same manner that various American right-wingers often seem to benefit from in certain sectors of their domestic media over there. A commentariat ready, willing, and fable to stand between him and the actual body politik, filtering out the more extreme stuff and presenting an 'acceptable' version of events ... which also, at the same time, does him the handy additional PR service of turning things like "he got several hundred of his ultra-loyal Church members to turn out somewhere on a Saturday for a stunt, just as he has done on numerous previous occasions in the past" into "Tamaki managed to motivate thousands of Aucklanders to brave rain and threat of arrest to come together and declare they wanted [whatever it is this time] ". 

Now, hitherto this hasn't tended to happen, for a few reasons. One of which being that bolstering Brian hasn't really aligned too terribly well with what various politically motivated media mouthpieces wish to do. Usually, that's because any talking up of Tamaki in such terms means that whatever cause he's associated with ... becomes that much more of just exactly that - a "cause he's associated with" - running the risk of toxifying it for other parties looking to capitalize upon it for anti-government momentum, and simultaneously diverting support from said other parties into whichever incarnation of Destiny's ill-fated political ambitions is running this time. Or, at the very least, softly away from the side lining up with him on the same side of whatever issue. 

Except this time, it's different. National (even with ACT) are in a situation which can't really be termed a 'death-spiral', because that would imply the moment of mortality had yet to occur. They're not so much pushing up daisies as slowly realizing that Judith Collins' tenure has put the 'psychotic' back into 'metempsychotic' for them. There's fairly little to lose by making much out of a Tamaki stunt - it might actually manage to do what National was seeking to stab at in the weeks prior to this current outbreak via its 'Groundswell' initiative ... that is to say, give the impression (Potemkin or otherwise) of there being a popular anti-Government wave of sentiment out there amongst the electorate. 

And handily, Tamaki had the ... 'enthusiasm' to do what most of the more regular political actors couldn't bring themselves to. Judith Collins might talk a big game in enthused tones about how she thinks Aucklanders will 'take back control' and move themselves (ourselves) down to Level 2 regardless of the public health consequences ... Tamaki's actually gone ahead and directly contravened the law.

Collins can 'jaw-jaw' about how the country outside of Auckland being under Level 2 is some sort of fear campaign (and even though I should perhaps defer to her superior expertise in the subject of psychological terror-tactics ... I disagree - as did Tauranga's wastewater this week) and how Auckland remaining at Level 3 is some kind of "political" conspiracy. Tamaki actually goes out and puts on the performative show of pledging resistance and 'rallying the partisans' to invite the 'heavy hand of the state' to ostensibly reveal itself. 

Collins going out to make herself look popular by just so happening to run into people who support her ... has all the depth of a two-dimensional painted backdrop, or the Hapsburg gene-pool. Tamaki, by contrast, at least manages to get a larger crowd together - and one that's quite overtly and obviously not significantly comprised of suit-wearing National apparatchiks. Indeed, a lot more 'normal' looking in various regards, an actual facing which - had it not driven up in convoy through Drury - could perhaps be regarded as looking like a spontaneous gathering of 'Waitakere Man'. The quintessential 'Ordinary New Zealander'. 

In other words, he's everything she's not. Except in charge of a major political party and constrained by the law and public health notices. 

It's telling that various of the media mouthpieces pushing for an Elimination to our previously successful and broadly popular Elimination strategy have moved from championing Collins to enthusiastically pointing to, as the Lord High Executioner put it - seemingly "All centuries but this / and every country but his own".

Mike Hosking, for example, has spoken enthusiastically about Sweden (some time before Sweden wound up ratcheting up its domestic restrictions), about New South Wales (about a week or two before its current Delta nightmare began in earnest), about how Jacinda Ardern should be more like NSW now-former Premier Gladys Berejiklian (we assume he didn't mean "forced out of office for corruption" - although he'd no doubt now suggest that that's exactly the sense that is relevant with a hopeful tone), and most recently about Singapore (immediately prior to Singapore having to roll back its re-opening under escalating pressure to its health system from burgeoning Covid-19 cases, in a situation exacerbated by its domestic economic inequality).

One could say he has predictive form in this area - but that is not my point in raising this seeming cavalcade of catastrophe. Instead, it's to merely observe that the lackluster state of Collins' leadership has left those who want to roll this government and overthrow our Elimination strategy by hook or by crook ... with few domestic figures they can utilize in support of their craven cause (with the apparent exception of evidently current National Party leader John Key). Even the 'Plan B' guys have largely had to go to ground following the escalating bizarreness of some of their claims. 

And that's why Tamaki is now useful. 

Because he turned up, possibly hoping to inspire a direct confrontation with the Police, and actually did the thing which many of these mouthpieces wouldn't dare to. Providing a bunch of photos of hundreds of people gathered together in direct challenge to the Government and to the vocally expressed will of much of the rest of the country. 

It's a 'useful' enough spectacle that you can viably expect a lot of his more usual 'eccentricities' to be consciously 'toned down' by media all-too-eager to act as that aforementioned 'translation' service - perhaps we ought suggest a 'transmogrification' service. 

So with all of that in mind ... 

Here's what's going to happen.

A protest event which had "hundreds" at it, is going to be reported (indeed, is already being reported) as having "thousands" in attendance.

The fact that Destiny Church is actually really good at corralling large numbers of people to come together for Church campaign events ... is likewise going to be studiously erased, to again make it seem like a broad and spontaneous explosion of popular discontent.

The fact that the Police - rather sensibly - didn't attempt to re-enact Melbourne a few weeks ago by actively trying to confront and arrest a rather larger number of attendees than they have easy holding capacity ... will be turned into "well if the Police aren't going to enforce the law by charging several hundred people right there on the spot, we may as well just abandon Covid-19 elimination measures entirely!"

The Government ... will be blamed for allowing the whole thing to go ahead, by virtue of not cracking down on it like the authoritarian state the people who'll blame the Government for allowing it to go ahead, have been breathlessly proclaiming the Government to be this entire time.

This will all be channeled into escalating shrill shouty by certain commentators in the media in advance of next week's Alert Level decision.

The whole event will be deliberately spun into some sort of would-be Cause Celebre, wherein an American-style televangelist without the broadcast rights, preaching to an audience of his nationwide congregation gathered on the steps of the Museum rather than throwing money toward him in a converted warehouse somewhere, will be presented as a Voice of Reason speaking for most of the city, and a protector of something something liberal freedom against the heavy hand of the no-doubt pseudo-Stalinist state. 

You can just see the columnist-inches start to assemble right now !

Media Proclaiming 'Elimination Of Elimination' Are Attempting To Ignore / Rewrite Reality

 Mid-way through the week, Chris Hipkins [i.e. the Covid-19 Response Minister] said this:

"We are still doing this ... we are still pursuing elimination, it is still the right thing for New Zealand.

We are of course looking forward to the future - it won't always be this way. So, my request of people is just hold your nerve, hold on."

Hold your nerve. Still pursuing Elimination. Still the right thing for New Zealand.

All pretty straight-forward stuff. And stated quite directly, some days aforehand. So why do I find this comment-worthy?

Because even after Hipkins had directly said we were still engaged in Elimination - we had voices in the media proclaiming the exact opposite. In the case of Mike Hosking, actively attempting to celebrate an alleged 'end' to Elimination and seemingly suggesting that there'd been some manner of official Government 'admittance' of 'defeat'.

So what's happening here? Evidently, the same thing that has repeatedly manifested in certain other democracies over the past few years - a moment wherein the media (or at least, certain portions of same) are in their own little 'bubble' and have effectively wound up talking right past both the facts and much of their own actual audience.

Some of these guys out there in the commentariat have decided that Elimination's got to go - and that, in fact, Elimination has somehow already gone. Even despite vocal and repeated statements to the contrary from the Government, and widespread (indeed, I'd suggest actively overwhelming) support for Elimination in the vast majority of the New Zealand public.

So instead of reporting on reality, they've chosen to endeavour to quite literally 'rewrite' it - proclaiming an Elimination of Elimination as an effort at brow-beating all the rest of us into seeing the premature end to the policy as something of an already-decided-upon fait accompli.

Now I mentioned occurrences in other democracies earlier, because that's somewhat what this reminds me of. Snooty journalists or self-anointed 'opinion-shapers' declaring that there was no way Brexit could win or Hillary Clinton lose - because it didn't fit into their own personal preferences and as it turned out (mis)perceptions as to reality. They were so used to their incipient words being reality that it came as quite a shock to find out that neither the facts nor the people they proclaimed they spoke for actually shared their view.

To be fair and sure, I have little doubt that it's not simply a matter of journalists or 'commentators' interviewing their own keyboards. There's a definite enthusiasm out there in certain portions of the business community in particular for Elimination to be itself Suppressed - and a general weakening of our Covid-19 response overall.

There's also a small but shouty sector of political and talkback opinion (and looking at the current leadership of the National Party, it's increasingly difficult to meaningfully distinguish the two in practice) which seemingly demands likewise. And never mind what the science (or, for that matter - indeed, especially for that matter - what the Government) says.

Yet I am struggling to think, offhand, of a previous occurrence in our politics and media wherein there's so much abject and outright 'denialism' of clearly visible and easily checkable reality - namely, the insistence that, against all appearances and substances to the contrary, the Government is to have 'abandoned' Elimination.

Then again, and with perhaps deference to a compulsion associated with a seeming personality trait of a few of these voices ... even a mirror shall not show you your own face if you are determined not to see it.