View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You welcome to this special preview of the latest patrons only episode of The Dispatchers podcast. If you like what you hear and you want to listen to the rest of this episode, just head on over to Patreon.com Left Foot Media and become a patron with $5 or more per month. The link is found in the show notes below. In the meantime, please enjoy this preview.
Hi, everybody. Welcome along to the Monday edition of the patrons only episode of The Dispatchers podcast. It is great to be back with you again and today's topic of conversation is Luxen is right. We have a fertility cris on our hands, so let's jump right in. And if you somehow managed to avoid the madness of last week and you just are completely unaware about what I'm talking about, lucky you. Well done, you. I don't know what your secret is, but you should write a book because last week was just insane. Here's the article from Radio New Zealand. National's deputy leader says Christopher Luxon was joking when he encouraged people to, quote, unquote, have more babies. Luxon was answering questions about New Zealand's immigration settings while outlining national's infrastructure policies in Christchurch yesterday. So yesterday was Wednesday, the 7 June. Immigration's always got to be linked to our economic agenda, and our economic agenda says we need people. I mean, here's the deal. Essentially, New Zealand stopped replacing itself in 2016. I encourage all of you to go out there, have more babies if you wish. That would be helpful. And there was apparently some chuckles from the audience at that stage. Speaking to reporters today, the party's deputy leader, Nicola Willis, was asked if she believed people needed to have more babies in New Zealand. This is the state of the New Zealand media. We have a pressing matter we would like to put to you, madam. As second in charge of the opposition party, do you think that we need to have more babies in New Zealand? Based on the back of a comment that was made yesterday, no, that is the decision for individuals depending on their desires and their family circumstances. I think what you're referring to is a joke that Christopher Luxon made. That's Nicola Willis speaking, by the way. Willis said national would never be a party that told people what the right size for their family was, which is interesting, because that's not what Christopher Luxon said anyway. He didn't say, unless you're going to have the eight children, that is not the right size for the family.
Zeus will have seven too small, Zozu have the nine too large, so eight is the right economic size for the family. He didn't say anything like that at all. He just said, Go and have more babies. But anyway, the National Party does not have a policy on, sorry, that we want to encourage women to change their decisions about their family size or change guidance to men, for that matter. Either and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous. He made a joke. Luxon's comments follow a spat between both major parties after the Labour's campaign chair Megan Woods likened national's prescriptions policy to the Dystopian TV show and novel The Handmaid's Tale. That's the five dollar prescription for the contraception policy, the one that labor has had all of this time, but now, all of a sudden, it's The Handmaid's Tale. If you bring back what has been Labour Party policy right up until now, this is just madness. I love it when they bring up The Handmaid's Tale. It's like the go to. And I think the moment that happens, it's the moment when basically you know that you have lost the debate, you've fallen into this sort of adolescent immaturity. Yeah, but what about The Handmaid's Tale? I think this is totally coming true.
It's like, so scary. We'll be dressing in red and looking like ketchup bottles soon with a white top on, and we'll be saying things like, under his eye.
No, we won't. And it is absolute madness, all of this. And all I can say about this is that there is a really serious issue here and basically almost all of the reactions that I've seen to this have not actually been helpful because they have made one of two major mistakes. So, first of all, this is just absurd. I've seen a lot of people reacting to this and, well, we just had one example here, know, bringing up The Handmaid's Tale. But it's not just Megan Woods who's been making that crazy comment. Lots and lots of people on the progressive side of the spectrum here in New Zealand have been using that absurd, absolutely absurd comparison. Secondly, yeah, it was a joke. He's joking, but it's a joke. That's one of those, like, ha. Yeah, I am joking. Yeah. So, yeah, we do it him with babies, but ha. We're not having enough kids. Ha. It's like people laughing at their own demise. Oh, look, there's an asteroid coming.
Look at the asteroid. It looks so funny. It's one of those kind of jokes, basically, but it was ultimately just a joke. Let's have a listen to the media press conference with Nicola Willis, because this is just I mean, it's laughably bad and it shows the state of our media and it's kind of embarrassing, really, when you have a listen to the questions and how they confronted her about all of this. Do people need to have more babies in New Zealand?
[00:05:23] Speaker B: No, obviously that is the decision for individuals depending on their desires and their family circumstances. I think what you're referring to is a joke that Christopher Luxon made, and that I understand.
Well, I understand that people who were there laughed at the joke.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: What about the people that were watching?
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Look, jokes are to be determined by the people in the room and I don't think anything was intended beyond that.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: You don't think that reflects his position.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Look, I wasn't there to hear the joke, but what I understand from those that were is that it was seen for what it was, which was an off hand remark.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: And it's not national's position that people need to have more babies than New Zealand.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: That is not national's position.
We will never be a party that tells people what the right size for their family is. That is a matter of individual choice, of family choice, and we respect that.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was Radio New Zealand's replay of the press scrum that happened around Nicola Willis on this particular issue. This is absolutely absurd and you hear it there in the questions. The fact that you've got journalists who are seriously trying to turn this into a Gotcha moment is just madness on multiple levels. And, yeah, it's a symptom of a Molly Coddled culture of fragility where people are just incapable of actually contextualizing comments. And also, it's that is one. But also, secondly, it's a symptom of a culture where people don't actually understand the gravity of the problem that he was actually talking about here. And this is the great irony, because I am right now, you can't see this, but I'm looking at a web page with Radio New Zealand's article about all of this that I've just read to you and it says, Christopher Luxon urges Kiwis to have more babies, saying it would be helpful. And then to the side of that, they've actually got a sidebar and it's got, like, previous articles and it brings up sort of related commentary. And the top related story is from March 2021. Have a listen to this. It's called Bye Bye Babies what Our Declining Birth Rate Means for New Zealand. And the summary is this new Zealand's plummeting birth rate means we have some serious planning to do. So literally, just over two years ago, that was Radio New Zealand and now today, it's like a Gotcha moment. How dare he say that we're not having enough babies? Well, two years ago they were saying this is a serious problem. There was a journalist called Kushla Norman who asked the following question last week. Is Christopher Luxon aware of laban's born and Hitler's experiment on this? She was talking to Nicola Willis. If you're a New Zealand journalist and you are asking that question, is Christopher Luxon aware of laban's born and Hitler's experiment on this, then you, I'm afraid, are not qualified to be a journalist in this country. And you actually need to do one of two things find a new profession, or number two, you need to actually be required to do some compulsory workplace training about the fundamentals of how to do journalism properly. For those who don't know about Leibnsbourne, it's literally Fount of life in German. And Leibnsborn was an SS initiated program that was run by the Nazi state to try and increase the number of children who would be born who were part of the standards of racial purity for Nazi Germany. So those who were basically healthy Aryans, and this was part of their positive eugenics program. The negative eugenics is the destruction of those who are considered unfit. The positive eugenics is the breeding and advancement of this idea that we will have or should have more of the fit in our society. This was unbelievable that someone would even ask this question. Because even if you disagree, or you don't understand the fertility cris properly, or you find yourself deeply offended by what Luxon said, and you think that The Handmaid's Tale is coming true, there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for linking his comments to Laban's Bourne and to Nazism, because they have absolutely nothing to do with each other whatsoever. And the fact that you are asking that question means only one of two things. Number one, that you are completely unethical. If you know what Laban's Born actually was, it was a racial purity breeding program. And if you know what that is, and you are asking that question of Christopher Luxon, then you are so unethical you need to undergo some ethics training or resign. I would suggest you from your media role because that is just obscene. Because the fact is, he never said anything of this sort. He was talking specifically about the economic implications of the coming lack of population that we are facing, the demographic winter that we are heading into. That's what he was talking about, Christopher Luxon. Nowhere, not once, not even remotely, did he say, we need to increase the racial purity of the New Zealand people and we need to have the right sort of people having the babies. We don't want the babies from the wrong sort of people. We want the fit to be breeding for the heron folk to be improved. Yeah, come and see here. Kinder no, that is not what he said at all. Not even remotely close. So either A, you're completely unethical and you're asking that question because you want to try and link Christopher Luxon and the National Party to Nazism, or number two, the fact that maybe you're so ignorant of history that you don't understand what that actually was that you were asking about. And if you're asking about things that you haven't properly researched as a journalist, you need to undergo workplace training that teaches you how to be a journalist. This is absolutely shocking, but that's the state of what we've got to in the New Zealand media. And this shows you the state of the culture we're living in. We are incapable, I think so often now, of thinking coherently about issues that really matter. And I'll tell you why. It's because we lack wisdom. And wisdom is a very, very important thing to possess as an individual and as a culture. And it has been eroded so radically in our culture that we lack the wisdom to actually properly discern on such a serious issue. Now, here's the thing that I saw on Twitter in response to this. I saw a very striking hatred, or what you might call an underlying hatred, basically for families and for babies. I was actually really quite surprised by this. I expected people to push back. I expected people who are on the I don't vote for national or on the progressive side to attack this comment, because anything that Christopher Luxon says pretty much gets attacked. And that goes both ways, by the way, for both sides of the political spectrum. So that's not unusual. And I expected people to say silly, crazy things like, I knew he would declare the Republic of know, you expect that kind of madness on Twitter. But there was more than that going on. There was a real striking hatred for families and for babies that was underlying this. And it was just so toxic. There was no sense of the goodness, the profound goodness of new human life and family life. It was like pure, radical, autonomous individualism. And on top of that, there were a whole other group of people who weren't in that sort of toxic hatred camp, but who had a deep sense of sort of a lack of hope in their replies. It was like, well, we can't have a kid because it's just too hard. And I get it. But here's the deal. I've had five of them myself. Well, my wife actually did the hard work, I can't take the credit for that. But my wife and I, we've got five children, and we have raised our five children up until literally only a couple of months ago on only one income, and it was mine. And I'm involved in Christian ministry work that I do full time that is purely donor supported. And so we're talking about a wage that is not at all high income. And we've just had to make sacrifices and we've had to do it tough at moments, but that's what you do. And the reason we've done that is not because we are sadomasochists and we're suckers for punishment. It's because we have a sense of hope, a deep, abiding hope, and something greater and more beautiful and good and true. And so it's like, yeah, this is the thing you do. And there's also a sense, I think, of obligation for us, that this is what you do in a society, if you're part of a society, you are responsible for, if at all possible, passing on and contributing to the flourishing of that society. And one of the most obvious, oldest and time tested ways of actually making that important contribution is to get married and have kids. If that's your calling, you should do it. And if it's possible, and nothing like the difficult cross of infertility gets in the way and the great sadness that accompanies that, then yeah, let's make some babies. That's part of our contribution to the world. And you do that because you have a sense of hope. And you have a sense that even though things are difficult right now, there is an absolute madness in our society. But guess what? I have this great hope that our kids can be part of actually building something beautiful and good, and that even in the midst of turmoil and suffering and darkness, there is still hope. There is still joy to be found. There is still goodness, there is still truth sorry. And there is still beauty that can be found in the midst of all of that. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, go and read Viktor Frankl's book, man's Search For Meaning. Not a very long book, but Viktor Frankl, a very unique self help book, if you want to call it a self help book. Nothing else quite like it. Viktor Frankl spent time in five different Nazi concentration camps as a Jewish prisoner. He lost his wife and unborn child at Ausfich concentration camp, and he writes the most beautiful work that you will ever read about meaning and hope and how this can be found even in the darkness of a Nazi concentration camp. And it's profoundly beautiful and wondrous. And if you can find it there, then we've really got no excuse in our current cultural situation. And it really struck me as very sad that for so many people, there was clearly a lack of hope. And the reason that hope is missing is because for a lot of people now, they don't have a belief in a sacred, transcendent religious order. They don't believe that there is anything more than this life. There is nothing to cling to. There is nothing to aim for. There is nothing to really anchor them beyond this life and whatever you can hope to build in it. And that's a great tragedy and it's caused great harm in our society. And this is one of the very clear ways that this plays out, this lack of hope when it comes to something so fundamental as having children. But here's the really important thing in all of this. It is very clear to me that even level headed people who didn't respond to Christopher Luxon's comments by saying, ah, The Handmaid's Tale is coming true. It's Gilead.
We're all going to be under his eye soon. The people who responded to this by saying, oh, yeah, this is an important conversation that we need to have. Even a lot of people in that camp didn't understand the gravity of the crisis. Now, some people in that camp sort of just downplayed it and said, oh, it's just a joke. It's no big deal. And then there were others who said, oh, this is an important issue, but we'll fix this with immigration, basically. Immigration will basically help us out of this particular problem. Here's the problem. No, that's actually not going to work. I would encourage people to read if they haven't read it already, the book Empty Planet the Shock of Global Population Decline by Daryl Bricker and John Ibitson. A very good book. And what it does is it just lays out the case. Now they're very pessimistic in their view of the future. They think that the coming population decline and it is fast approaching within the next couple of decades. They are saying that basically it will be the demise of humanity in their view.
I'm not so dystopian in my outlook, but there's definitely an issue that is going to cause serious problems because we haven't had enough babies and it is fast approaching. And I think that the media gotcha moment really stems from ignorance of this important truth. And it's funny, because, like I said, Radio New Zealand, literally a year and a half ago, they've got no excuse. Because literally a year and a half ago, or just under a year and a half ago, they were actually talking about how this was a serious crisis that requires planning. And now it's like they've forgotten all of that already. So there's already a huge ignorance about all of this and it really matters. And I think this book should be required reading for everyone in the New Zealand media. But I think the problem is they're all too busy with climate change alarmism and that's why they are not realizing that there is actually a far more pressing crisis that's upon us. And ironically, that cris the population decline that is about to hit us will actually bring about a massive change in the climate crisis that they are really obsessing over as well. Because basically what will happen in the next couple of decades is there will be very few people to produce and emit carbon on our planet and it will massively change that, but it will bring a whole lot of other serious issues. So we really don't have any excuse to be so obsessed with a climate alarmism when we've got a far more pressing issue that is right on our doorstep and we're not even understanding it. It's so clear to me that we're not understanding it and we need to actually talk about it. And what I want to do now is I want to talk about two related issues that really matter in this regard. The first is an article from the Economist from just ten days ago which actually talks about the global fertility cris and how serious this is. And I want to give you the key points from that article and why we cannot actually solve this problem with immigration. And then I want to talk about an example of what this will actually mean at the coalface in New Zealand. And it's a story about a gentleman who experienced a absolutely horrific journey through our healthcare system in his later years, towards the end of his life. And it's a story that needs to be heard and understood because it will only get worse as a direct result. This will be one of the harms that will come about as a lack of babies in our country. There's really, really big and very serious practical implications for all of this. So let's start by looking at this article from The Economist.
Thanks for listening to this preview of our patrons Only podcast. To unlock the full version of this episode, plus get access to over 12 hours of new and exclusive patrons only content every single month. Simply become a five dollar monthly [email protected].
Left Foot Media the link is found in the show notes below. Don't forget live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on The Dispatchers.
Ram Sam.
