[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
Welcome to Dispatches with Dewa, the monthly episode of the Dispatch Batches podcast where we talk with political commentator Dewa de Boer about exactly what is going on in the world of New Zealand politics and we discuss and dissect everything that's trending globally as well. Dewa de Boer is a political commentator who runs conservative think tank right minds New Zealand. He also writes a column for the BFD and he has a Friday morning radio show on reality czech radio. He advocates for a return to tradition, is optimistic about the future, and he lives in Auckland with his wife and their three kids. So without any further ado, let's get into this episode of Dispatches with Dewa.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Run out, love it or run on. Run all day till you can't be found. Run out, I gotta run on. Keep on running till the sun goes down.
You can outrun the devil, but you ain't gonna outrun me.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Dewa. Welcome back. It's hard to believe it's already April. Another episode of Dispatches with Dewa. And I know that things have been a little bit challenging with reality check radio, so perhaps we should start there and just tell us a little bit about what's happening.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Well, it is great to be back for another month. I actually came a little bit more prepared this time with, you know, did some work on the political tracker, which we'll get into soon. And you've been doing pretty well. So you've been churning out the content day after day, doing.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Doing my bit and.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Well, yeah, so it's been great. I've made seven episodes of the dialogue with Dewa de Boer for RCR. When I started early on in the year, they basically did say, hey, we're not sure we can offer you a contract for the whole year. We're seeing how things are going and they've been pushing for more. More funding, more donations. As you know, it costs a lot to keep an outfit like reality check radio going. But basically, faced with a situation where a good percentage of the production of the radio show is covered by monthly memberships, 35% actually. That leaves a pretty big gap. About two thirds of the radio shows that are basically entirely covered by donations as they come in. So looking at the numbers, they've got a great plan to get the station stable in the next few years, but they really need a good bit of funding to get through this rough patch here. So it's not over. It's not over. We're not like news hub where it's dead.
This is kind of a grow or die situation where either RCI was faced with the fact of, okay, we have to deliver less or we need more money. And that's really the situation that we're in. So it's tough. But I believe in RCI has been great work. I think a lot of people are giving their feedback saying, I'm really missing RCR. It's been a couple of days, but where we filled a massive void in the media space in New Zealand, and we want to keep doing that if we can. And that's all dependent on whether or not listeners are willing to just put a little bit of money forward for the content that they consume. Something that all media organizations are dealing with, something you deal with here as well. At the end of the day, this kind of content costs money to produce, and we were reliant on the generosity of the people who enjoy the content.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Well said, Dewa. And on that note, I should say that those who are listening in, who are not patrons, you can consider supporting us that way. And if you become a five dollar monthly patron, you will get an exclusive patrons only episode every single day of the week, Monday through Friday. And also you will get to hear part two every month of our dispatches with Dewa, which is always behind the paywall. Plus we've got some other really exciting ventures that we're working on. There's some moves, shall we say, afoot in the background. I'm not going to say too much now, but to move more into the video interview space. But that is all going to take support and funding to do that. So it's slowly, gently, gently catch a monkey. But the more people who become patrons, the better, really. So if you can, that's a great thing to do. In the meantime, if you can't do that, please subscribe right here on the Free podcast. And if you can, on the platform you're listening on, give us a like and give us a rating. All of that really, really helps the show. The algorithm loves that kind of stuff. Now let's jump straight into it, Dewa. Let's talk about Christopher Luxon, because he's come out earlier this week and he's announced. I think this was a bit of a surprise, wasn't it, for most people these new 2030 targets, they're calling them, and this was at Monday evening's press conference, the prime minister's media stand up, and all of a sudden here's Luxon announcing these new targets for 2030. Tell us a bit about those targets and what do you think about this particular strategy?
[00:05:20] Speaker C: The strategy itself, I believe, was actually started by John Key, which would have been many years ago. Now, I don't remember the details, but there was some controversy early on where the Labour party actually cancelled a number of targets that the national party had set in their last term. And I believe this is sort of a return to that situation, except I believe the targets were mostly to do with first responder situations or healthcare waiting times in the emergency room. That was kind of the primary use of these targets initially, but we're further down the track now of the corporatization of the government. So getting business, KPI's set by Luxon. Whether you like it or not. That's the way it's done now.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Well, can we talk about that issue? Because I'm in two minds about this and I think you're probably with me here as a good, authentic conservative. I really loathe the managerial bureaucracy that just dominates liberal status type culture. And so on the one hand, that is frustrating to see a government being reduced to just like a corporation with KPI's. However, on the other side of the coin, it's been so many years now of underperformance, poor performance, abject failures and a failure to deliver that it's kind of like, okay, well, at least we've got something we can sort of measure on.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. We don't have a government by our betters anymore. You know, sort of the aristocratic class that's putting in their, their lives into being part of the land and bettering it or whatever, however good or bad that went. We really are down this path of, you know, the government as a corporation. So the best thing you can have, or the ultimate enemy of the managerial class, as I like to say, the enemy of the managerial class is a competent manager.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:07:07] Speaker C: And that's what Christopher Luxon is promising to be, a competent manager. And you can tell the bureaucracy hates that. So you've got two ways to deal with the bureaucracy. Obviously, you can destroy it or you can manage it properly. There's a lot of controversy in conservative circles around what the appropriate thing to do is here, but I can't change it. So we'll just deal with what we have. And there is another thinker in neo reactionary circles. His name is Curtis Yavin, and he has actually advocated for running the government like a corporation. He says, the king is the CEO, and the country is the nation is the company. So the Silicon Valley types, the technocrats, they see it this way. And some of them are genuinely competent. Like Elon Musk. Right? You look at Elon Musk, he gets things done. He is part of this managerial system, but he's someone who's able to get things done.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: What will you kind of feel, though, too, with someone like Musk? That he. He has a sense of humanity about him as well. He's got his flaws all on display. He's not so much process driven. It's more about the end goal and about the ambitions. And he's also got a sense of some, even if we might disagree with him, and places a bigger philosophy about life, it seems. I always get worried when you don't see any of that other, deeper stuff. All you get is processes.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: That's what I like about Elon Musk is he's not one of us in the sense that he's, like, a traditionalist or a conservative, but he's a real human being.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: And that's. I'd rather have a real human being with flaws than some kind of impersonal system.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Oh, amen to that.
[00:08:44] Speaker C: I'll get to the targets now. So we did have these nine targets.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: I should talk about those. I was about to say, we've spent all this time talking about Elon Musk, and we haven't even talked about the targets. So tell me about the targets and what you think about this.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: So, the first thing is that the targets are boring. And as you can tell, we just naturally started talking about other things because the targets are boring. But they are useful to a degree. Some of them are bad as well, which is good to know. And again, it's better to know that they have a bad target than just to have them delivering the stuff in the shadows. So the first thing is shorter stays in emergency departments, which has been a big problem under the last government. This was a previous target under John Key that was gotten rid of. 95% of patients need to be admitted, discharged, or transferred from an emergency department within 6 hours. I don't know what the average waiting times are at the moment, but they're probably well above that. I think it would be nicer to see, like, an average time that's brought down saying 95% within 6 hours. And the second option. Sorry, second target here is shorter waiting times for elective treatments as well. So 95% to wait less than four months for elective treatment. I'm not sure what the status on that currently is. Actually didn't one of the things that when they announced these targets, they didn't tell us what the current stats are. I could probably find them somewhere just now that I'm thinking about it. But in the moment it's going to take me too long to try and figure out what the current stats are. Presumably they're much, much worse than this. So they're supposed to be ambitious targets that are going to take six years to deliver, which potentially would be across two or more of their terms would be delivered in their third term. So you can really see he's planning for this three term, nine year strategy. They want to reduce child and youth offending by 15%. Again, I don't think that's ambitious. To me saying 15% reduction in youth crime, like saying 90% would be good, right?
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Crack, like really crack down, you know, 1010. To me 15% could almost be a statistical anomaly. You know, you could have a good year and 15% lower reduce violent crime as well. So they want 20,000 fewer people who are victims of an assault, robbery or sexual assault, which I think is about 1015 percent as well. Not ambitious to me. Fewer people on the job seeker support benefit. So 50,000 fewer on the, on the dole, basically seeking, you know, out of work. 20, that's a 25% reduction. Again, not hugely ambitious to me. Increased student allowance. That's number six, so. Sorry. Allowance attendance. So increased student attendance to 80% present for more than 90% of the term.
Student.
Sorry. And the 7th point is more students expected at curriculum levels. They want, again, 80% at the expected curriculum level in reading, writing and maths. The 8th point is fewer people in emergency housing on a 75% reduction in emergency housing. That's probably a good target. 75% reduction sounds good to me. Sounds more ambitious than saying 25% reduction in other areas. And the 9th one is the worst one. Reduced net greenhouse gas emissions. They want to put us on track to meet our 2050 net zero climate change targets with net emissions of no more than, I don't know, like 300 megatons, whatever. That is a meaningless number because obviously it's all gobbledygook. And unfortunately this is a big deal for the National Party. You can see it in their coalition commitments. They've made sure that New Zealand first and act have fully committed to, you know, the net 2050 net zero climate change agenda.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: I listened to that list, and I think, and particularly some of those less ambitious numbers. And you think, are they just trying to do what they know they can deliver? Because perhaps the bigger vision is missing here. Behind it all, you know, it is a lot easier to say, okay, let's set a very modest target, achieve a modest target here, an outcome, and then say, look, we're a good government, rather than to actually do what really good governments actually do, which is have a comprehensive vision for the common good and for society, and then do the hard work, often the most unpopular stuff at the time, to actually try and course correct or build or, you know, enable the flourishing of a society.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: Well, for once, you. And I agree with Chris Hipkins because his response was that it was not ambitious, that it was unimaginative. And that's exactly what I thought when I saw the targets. I'm like, hey, Chris Hopkins, I agree with you, probably for the complete opposite reason. Complete opposite reason. But I agree that it's not particularly ambitious. It's not very imaginative. And like you said, that's really what they're setting here, is things that they know they can achieve. And I actually noticed this when I was looking at my political tracker.
I didn't do my homework last month, but this month I did. I went through all the items in their 100 day plan, and I saw the press release saying, oh, we've achieved all the items in a hundred day plan. Here's our next 36 point plan. And then I looked at when they did all the press releases for many of these items, and a lot of them were coming in like three or four days before the 100 day plan was due. Like, the ministers were quickly filing in their press releases for the work that they'd done. So there's a bit of both to it in that he is keeping these ministers on their toes, that they don't get lazy. So you had this with the previous labor government. You had ministers that didn't do press releases for like six months or whatever. I don't know what they were doing, what they were delivering. Probably nothing. So he's making sure they deliver something. But at the same time, like I said, it's not ambitious. There's no overarching goal. They basically have a checklist that they're working on. Do the checklist, take off meaningful chunks like you would do in your office with your tasks that you've been assigned, and you just kind of break it up and chunk it up and do the bits that you need to do. And I guess the targets are just there to make sure that the ministers.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Don'T get lazy on that point. Maybe it would be a good time to cue the music for our regular political tracker. So, maestro, if you will, please.
So, dewa, where are we at with the political tracker? You've actually updated the tracker and I was having a look at it yesterday and I'm thinking to myself, gosh, it's very interesting to see where things are at. Give us the overview, though. How and where is this government at? Are they delivering? Are they sometimes delivering? Where are things at with the promises that they've made so far?
[00:15:09] Speaker C: So the first thing I've done with the tracker is it's got its own nice URL now. So you can go to coalitiontracker NZ. Just one word. Coalitiontracker NZ. You can look at the tracker, the 100 day plan. Basically, the government claimed it had delivered the entire 100 day plan. I did check that they actually had delivered all the hundred day plan and they did.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: So what does that mean, though? That means they have actually done something or they started something. Have they complete, what does it mean?
[00:15:42] Speaker C: So that means that we've gone from 18 items delivered before.
I think the last. I think the last time I gave an update, we had 18 items delivered. They've gone now up to 40 items delivered in total as of today. I think there was one. There was actually one today when I was doing another check. So they did add to that. So that's about 18% of the total items in the various coalition agreements. The one with New Zealand first, the one with act, we have a total of nearly 230 items and they've delivered about 18% of that. And I've worked out that we're about just over 10% of the way through the first term. So, again, a lot of these are easy items to deliver, but they are keeping ahead of where they would be if they were trying to achieve the entire set of coalition agreements. So it is still possible for them to deliver on all of the coalition agreements if they keep doing this. And they're currently working on another 10% or so, 11% of them, tracking 24 items in progress at the moment. And that's either stuff that I can find that some press release has been made or some Twitter comment or something, some media item has been written, that some work is being done on it, or it's been announced in the next action plan. So Christopher Luxon has announced an action plan, I think, 30, 35, 36 points. Not all of that maps onto the coalition commitments, because some of it is just the stuff that the National Party wants to do. So I'm not going to break it all down. And some of it is just chunks of existing items. They may achieve something on their action plan but it might only be 1020 percent of getting the actual commitment done. Especially the act party is very, very good. Like if I'm looking at the coalition tracker, I can see, oh, hey, the ACT party has, you know, done like double the amount of items on their list. Then New Zealand first has, you know, like whatever it is that they're doing, whatever, whatever they're doing behind the scenes, they're, they're pushing through a lot more of their stuff a lot faster than New Zealand first is. A lot of it has been repealed. So they forced through very, very quickly under. That was just labor legislation they were repealing. The legislation is starting to work its way through and that will take say three to six months and then you're going to start seeing like, yeah, do they get that legislation across the line in the next three to six months and do they keep it moving? Do they keep introducing new legislation next month as well and the month after and slowly start tracking those bills through?
[00:18:05] Speaker A: There was a bit of a shock moment in parliament. Was it last night or the night before? I'm trying to remember. I think it might have been last night with that Green Party bill regarding the citizenship issue for the sarmoans. This had been an issue that had been hanging around for decades and act and New Zealand first got in behind the bill and supported it to its first reading. And if they hadn't done that, the bill would have been dead in the water. But here's the thing. The National Party voted against it and I looked at the substance of the bill and what it's asking for and to me it seems a very humane and reasonable proposition. So I was kind of surprised by that moment and I thought about it and I thought, well, we probably shouldn't be surprised. There probably will be other moments like that because this coalition is actually still quite diverse. They're not really all of the same mind on everything, are they?
[00:18:56] Speaker C: No. And that's one of the reasons why they have the coalition agreement, one of the reasons why it's nice to be able to track it publicly. I actually feel sometimes like my work is almost a bit redundant because clearly they have someone behind the scenes who's ticking the boxes as well because they're making sure that they actually deliver on the little chunks that they promise, especially with Luxon doing his quarterly reviews and giving the bullet point lists for ministers to deliver. So. But obviously, that's behind the scenes for them. And it's nice to be able to surface that for the public to actually be able to have a look at rather than just, you know, oh, the beehive has really done a press release saying they've delivered what they have. Oh, really? So, yeah. And I can make some notes as well. Like, one interesting note I made this month was the fuel taxes. Right. One of the items was to cancel the fuel tax increases. I nearly gave them a fail on it, but then I decided to. It's technically a pass because they've delayed them until 2027, and that's technically the next parliamentary term. So they can say, well, we, you know, they were cancelled this term. If they come back next term, well, that's a different, different situation. So you got to keep your eye on. So I made a little note on that for people they know, okay, there's a little bit of a game being played here that cancelled means we're doing it next time. And you'll see this with many of these bills that will come through that aren't in the coalition agreement. You may get them passed with some parties being opposed and the opposition being held to get things in. This is usually how things work in a parliamentary democracy that's got an MMP system like ours, where you do have, on specific issues, different factions form or you get conscience issues, and people don't vote across party lines. I can see the same thing happening with, say, the aCT party bill that was drawn yesterday to get the Easter trading laws repealed so that people can, you know, because the act party is all about people doing business 24/7 greed is 365 days a year. And we can't possibly have some time together as a nation where we don't do something like a collective community where people live in a society. So the act party doesn't like people living in a society. And then you look at, okay, well, do they have the votes to pass that kind of a bill? The unions hate it because that means more people have to work. And working is bad as far as the unions are concerned. So you get labor against, you got Greens against, you got the Mori party against, and all you really need is, say, somebody like New Zealand first, which seems likely to me to say, no, we're not voting for that. And then it's impossible to pass. So you're going to see bills like that. And as well, they may want to stick it to Luxon on an issue or two, and they may pick up a bill from the Greens, they may pick up a bill from labor and run that through. So I expect to see a little bit of that. But it'll probably mostly be on very minor issues like you've mentioned, sort of very, very niche, seemingly inconsequential things.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Just to wrap this segment up, Luxon, I think, really has to deliver here, doesn't he? Because he does not have the force of personality or the charisma to cover over. He really, this is his prime ministership, is absolutely dependent on being a reliable postman. Right. And if he stops delivering, he's got nothing else in the arsenal to call on.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: Absolutely. For him, that's 100% the case. And he, he is doing that well. As far as I'm concerned, he's doing that well.
Even though I don't like him particularly much, I have to say, okay, he spent four or five months now and he is making sure that their coalition stays on track. You see a lot of people out there, the pundits who say, oh, the government might not make it, they might break up, they're unstable. There are cracks. If you look at Luxon's managerial style, he is delivering on that. That is his ticket and he knows it's a sticker. And so he's going to keep doing that and he'll make sure they stick together. Seymour and Peters know that. You know, they have the, they have the, the run of the room as far as it goes to do all the other shenanigans because, because, yeah, Luxon's not serious when it comes to that.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: And we'll be here, folks, every single month on the dispatches with Dewa, tracking the progress and letting you know how it's all going. And if there are specific issues you'd like to ask about in that regard, just chuck them in the comments section or get in touch. And we'll make sure that in future episodes we will explore specific areas of delivery and we can let you know how they're going if you want to know more about that.
Alrighty, Dewa. So that was the political tracker, the coalition tracker for this month. Let's get into some of the other issues in this episode. And by the way, folks, if you become a patron with $5 or more per
[email protected]. Left foot media the link is in today's show notes. You will get access to next Monday's exclusive patrons only episode of the Dispatches with Dewa. And we're going to be talking about Trump's new clarification or the controversy, really, around his new clarification on his abortion stance. We'll be talking about the Brazilian. Well, I was going to say government, but it's the Supreme Court censorship of Twitter that's going on there. Politically motivated censorship. We'll be talking about the six month milestone, absolutely shocking, of the bloody war that Israel has begun with Hamas in Palestine. And what that actually means. Will there be accountable? What does this all mean? And more in the next episode. So make sure you become a five dollar monthly patron to be able to listen to and access all of that. In the meantime, though, let's talk about a couple of other issues. Dewa, the trust in the New Zealand media has fallen off a cliff. I don't think you and I are surprised by this, but the result is still shocking.
The data was released earlier this week in an annual report that AUT has been publishing every year for almost five years now. And they've been tracking the public trust in the media. And it started in 2020 with 53% trust. Now already. That is a crisis point, I would argue. But typical media, they didn't understand that was a crisis point. Then it went to 48% and then it went to 45% and then it went to 42%. And they still are not realizing they're in a crisis. And then all of a sudden, 2024, it's now at 33%. So basically, two out of every three or two thirds of the New Zealand public, they just don't trust the media. And that is absolutely a crisis. There's no other way to describe it. They have a serious integrity and credibility issue. But Dewa, for some reason, the media just does not either want to acknowledge or doesn't seem to get that this is actually quite serious.
[00:25:41] Speaker C: And they're responding by doubling down, it seems. I have no. Just madness, no introspection from them. I'm actually disappointed because trust in the media is too high. One third. Come on. Can you. Can you believe that over 30% of people trust the media? That, to me, is a crisis. That's the real crisis.
And as far as they're concerned, Brendan, it's your fault. The reason trust is so low is because people like you are saying bad things about them and you're giving people alternative views and telling people that they don't have to believe everything they hear on tv. So that's.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Well, that's the tactic, right? The tactic has been to say, oh, this is all because of. Well, first of all, it was Trump. It was Trump's fake news in 2016. He destroyed the media and then it became misinformation and disinformation. Then it became Russians. And now the latest we've seen is we had a New Zealand journalist who publicised on Twitter the night this was published that, no, this has got nothing to do with the media. It's the Atlas network who have caused this. It's just astounding that their responses, that they're going to promote a conspiracy theory, claiming that it's all a conspiracy theory and theorists that work to destroy them, and that's why people don't trust them. So in other words, we're all just dumb ignoramuses.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: I don't think they can regain this trust either, because if you're running a media organization, your industry is basically built on reporting the truth. But then what is truth? As a man famously asked in the Bible, what is truth? And that's really the problem, because journalists reject the real truth for. For their progressive social causes, so there's no path back to them for trustworthiness, because everything they believe to be truth and delivering truth is built on a lie, built on the rejection of the truth. And that's where the shift of the culture has been in the past, say, 50 years especially, is built on a rejection of the truth. And the entire industry of mainstream or legacy journalism is built on that rejection.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: That incident that you referred to in the christian scriptures, you might remember, I guess a lot of our listeners will, because they're very clever, astute and smart people who read well, that Christ responded to pilate as well, and said, you know, you'd have no power if it hadn't been given to you from above. Well, the media don't seem to realize that they don't wield any power unless the populace are willing to actually let them have that power. And they do that by putting their trust in them. Right. And it's quite astounding to see this crisis. I think you're right when you say that it won't actually be regained. I am planning a podcast episode for the next. At some point in the next couple of weeks for our patrons, where I'm going to list out what I think are some things that the media could do to actually start rebuilding trust. But the more I look at that list and that strategy, it requires some hard work on their part. And I don't mean hard work necessarily as in hard graft, but they just have to admit there's a problem and be humble about it. And that's hard. That is really hard to do. And, yeah, I think there's a certain point at which you cross the line, and this is a global phenomenon too. And you cross the line with the loss of public trust and you probably have lost it for a generation. You've got to recruit a whole new generation who don't know your track record, surely, to get that back. And I doubt they can outlast that.
[00:29:09] Speaker C: The industry also is not adapted either. They haven't really tried to adapt. It was built for advertising, which is also another form of propaganda. So they had this symbiotic relationship with, I guess, capitalist propaganda, getting people to buy stuff. A big part of that traditional advertising is dead. Social media really has changed the world. So, I mean, it's in the name social media and media, and it's empowered citizen journalists, starting with bloggers on the Internet just over 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And of course you've got newcomers like left foot media, RCR, the BFD, and as we secure funding from the people who are enjoying our content, the people who are listening, the people who are thankful to have alternatives within, eventually we will overtake the legacy media, so things will get more fragmented. And I think that's a good thing as well. I think it's healthy. Back in the day, I think about political parties are running their own newspapers. That's quite common. Even in the UK. You had like five major newspapers that were basically set up by different political parties at some stage, you know, so.
And that tv changed that. Like, everything gave way to basically bureaucrats and progressive activists running like, tv channels, like running a single source of truth, as one of our prime ministers famously said. And I actually think that was the aberration, like having this kind of like, tv single source of propaganda has changed and things are going to get far more transparent. You're going to know the biases of the people who are providing you with the information. When people tune into left foot media, when they tune into the dispatches, they know who we are.
We're not giving them a hidden agenda, we're giving them transparency. So even if people disagree with us, then they can filter that if they need to or whatever, they understand what they're actually getting. I think that was the big lie of the media, and why they're failing is that it was, the lie is that you were going to get unbiased news, you were going to get a single source of truthful, accurate, unbiased information, and that was the lie.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: I think there's an interesting elephant in the room here too, because there's a lot of talk about what you might call, you know, recovering pure journalism as in getting back to the ethical fundamentals, and I have a lot of sympathy for that. But the actual elephant in the room is there's never been pure journalism. I don't think the more I've contemplated this issue, I actually don't think it has ever existed. If you go right back to the very like you talked about, the early days of newspapers, they were started for a reason. They have always had a propagandistic bent. They report events to try and promote particular narratives to drive political stories. And that has only really got more and more intense because as the. Over the centuries, the voting franchise was given to more and more people, and now it's in our country, anyone over 18 who's eligible can vote. What that means is the news media has to become the narrative world builder that convinces you to vote in particular directions. And so powerful people have realized this. It's the only pulpit. Literally, we've abandoned the other pulpit by and large. So this is the only pulpit. And so I think in a sense, what needs to be recovered here is, well, it's not so much a recovery, but it's almost like it's, you need to strip things away and say, well, what would a pure, genuinely integrity filled journalism look like where you actually just reported the facts about important issues and stripped away everything else? We've never had that. So this could be one of those moments where maybe one or two people might actually just rise above the fray and try something like that. But you're right. In the meantime, I think it's important that people have the ability to go to different news sources and you can check facts and all the rest of it. But also, you are very clear with a lot of like independent outfits, you know where they're coming from, you know, the voice that you hear, you know, there's no need for anyone to say bye be wear, you know what you're getting into.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: And there are left wing outfits that have done fairly well, like, you know, that have adapted to a new model as well. I'm thinking of the spin off as the famous one basically subscriber funded New Zealand Herald as well. They've announced that they're basically 100% subscriber funded as well.
So as that's the ideal place to be with RCI, that's the goal in three years, if ever 100% subscriber funded. And they've basically been able to do that by being at least with the spin off, you know, you're going to get left wing propaganda. And so they've got people who want left wing propaganda and they pay for it. Or there are people who want to know what the left wing propaganda is. And so they are interested in that as well. So you can go and know what you're getting when you're going to be reading, you know, the slant you're going to get on the store. You know, even if you're getting facts, you, you know, there has been some kind of bias in the collection of the facts. Sometimes, you know, they're more interested in some issues and other issues and so on. So all of that is, I think, just inevitable and actually probably healthy for the media sphere.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: It's interesting, actually, because I was thinking about that very issue lately, you know, the whole thing of, because we don't really have much choice at the moment. You've actually got to go to different sources and try and, you know, glean what you can about issues in the world by listening across the platforms. But in actual fact, it really shouldn't be that way. That's not really healthy because all that's doing is really encouraging echo chambers and silos. And what you need is you need a restoration of authentic community, I think. And what that means is that you want news sources that actually really are working hard to bring zero bias. So they don't editorialize at all. They just tell you, hey, here's an event, here's what happened. Here's what someone said. Here's what someone else said. And they don't tell you at all what to think. They just present the facts. And if there was more of that, we wouldn't need to go off into these different ideological or philosophical directions. And one of the things that I've worked hard on with left foot media is I've tried to go beyond just reporting or reacting to news. I'm trying to say, okay, well, what would it look like if we actually had an engagement with the world that went deeper? So we looked at what the philosophies behind various events were and also what we might be able to proactively do to live out a counterculture of goodness, truth and beauty when we're encountered or when we're sort of engaging with and swamped, perhaps at times we feel by all of these events in the world that seem totally out of our control and all the rest of it, and even just cutting through the onslaught of information. And you see, that's kind of a different way, I think, of approaching all of this, the constant sort of, just give me information. I don't know how much longer that can really last. It certainly can't sustain because it's not giving you anything deep to build a life upon. At the end of the day, this.
[00:35:48] Speaker C: May just go back to the thing you hinted at, is that in the era of mass democracy, where everyone over the age of 18 participates in democracy, we may have reached the inevitable kind of end of the road. So I like what you are thinking. I like what you're doing.
I can't see it implemented on a large scale in the way that the democratic system is run.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: No. Well, and to do that, you would have to first accept, I think, some fundamental realities, like natural law.
There's a sacred, transcendent order to the world, and, you know, there is objective truth out there. We're not all just crafting our own social construct narratives. That's a whole. And this is the other big elephant behind all of this. The media crisis is a reflection of a worldview clash. That's what's going on. It's a crisis of visions of reality, competing visions of reality, and you can't separate the two things. And to get to that point, you're right, it's not just raw democracy, it's actually a recognition. Ah, there is truth. And in order to be good and to find authentic beauty, I must actually conform myself to that truth. And we're not in a society that promotes that way of living even remotely. So, Dewa, having said all of that, and I'm looking at the time here, and I'm really doing my best to make sure that you don't get stuck away from your wife and family too long tonight. So I think before we wrap up, we had one other story that I wanted to talk about, but I will finish by actually talking about the. Perhaps a story that might be a little bit more bite sized, and that is the morphing of the climate strike protest into a what looks to me suspiciously like a general progressive, revolutionary anti government rally of diminishing numbers. Where it's gone from everyone gets a free day off school to, I don't know, yell at the government about what they are not doing to solve the great climate crisis. To this year it was climate crisis, it was Israel and Gaza. It was. What else was there? Treaty issues.
[00:37:55] Speaker C: The treaty, yeah.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: It just looked like it had become a revolutionary rally.
[00:38:00] Speaker C: Chris Trotter wrote an excellent analysis of what happened, kind of like a post mortem. And he's actually said that they're dead. Like he said, it's died because in 2019, this is under the Labour government in March. This is exactly five years ago. Basically, exactly five years ago, they estimated that 170,000 New Zealand secondary school students took this to the streets.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:38:26] Speaker C: It was about 3% of the population in 2024. So five years later, by the most generous estimate, the organizers of this strike turned out 5000 people.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:38:37] Speaker C: And I say people, not just students. There's, you know, perhaps mostly, mostly adults and professional activists.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Well, that was one of my points because I saw that on the media coverage. It's like, hold on. Hold on a minute here. There are either a lot of people in New Zealand have been held back ten or 15 years in their last year of high school, or there's something. There's some funny business going on here and there's a lot of adults and activists and university students in that mix.
[00:39:03] Speaker C: Five years ago, they had a government that they could protest against that might actually make changes. And now I guess people realize, well, the government's not going to actually listen to our concerns because we were all voting for the previous government. So maybe the strike is not going to work out. It's not going to have an impact.
I think they were hoping for a big impact from the last government because they could get revolutionary change under the labor government, then they didn't get it. So that probably cut deep as well. Like, why turn out again if we protested when we had the most left wing government possible? We had the Green. The Green Party had the climate change portfolio and they didn't get anything. That probably dealt quite a big blow to their movement. And then the other one is the intersectionality that you've hinted at where they've mushed all these different issues together. And, I mean, I wrote about this in a column for the BFD last week, so it'll be free to read Saturday morning on writeminds NZ. You can read my analysis of it. I'm actually not going to go into my analysis of it because I want to focus on something a bit different. But my analysis is basically like, to the revolutionary left, it's all the same thing. But what killed the movement, and Chris Trotter brought this back up, is that the revolution ate itself. So you had the Auckland. You had the Auckland branch that disbanded. And I don't know if you remember this, but I'm going to read out this quote from what they posted on social media. And once I finished reading it, everyone will fully understand why they didn't turn anybody out this time. So here's the quote I'm studying now. We are disbanding because since 2019, the students strike for Climate Auckland as well as the wider national group, though we can't speak on their behalf, has been a racist, white dominated space.
Student strike for climate Auckland has avoided ignored and tokenized BIPOC black indigenous people of color voices and demands, especially those of Pacifica and Mori individuals in the climate activism space. As well as this, the responsibility and urgent need to decolonise the organization has been put off far too long. School strike for climate has also delayed paying financial reparations for the work that BIPOC groups, individuals within and alongside the group have done for this organization in the past. And they finished with. We fully disclose any future and current Pkeh led groups from occupying the space we leave behind. Full stop, end quote.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Oh man, that is just. That's glorious. God bless their little hearts.
It's interesting. Cause when I first saw what was going on with this, I thought to myself, okay, like Chris Trotter, this is the beginning of the end. But then I had to think about it and I thought, oh, there's also something troubling here, because a lot of problematic revolutionary movements have started kind of like this and lead to some very bad outcomes where they just become revolutionary anti government turnouts. And you get these disenfranchised, predominantly middle class kids who are looking desperately for some sort of existential meaning in their life. And this becomes the thing. And then sometimes this can morph into something a whole lot worse. Throughout history, we've seen this repeated time and time again. However, when you looked at the actual turnout, you're like, okay, you know, this is definitely dying. It's not like it's now going to morph into some sort of broader, violent revolutionary movement. They can barely even organize themselves clearly to. And with a free day off school too, to actually turn out in any reasonable numbers.
[00:42:45] Speaker C: And what may be the saving grace of the revolutionary movement, as I read out there, is that white people are not allowed to be involved in leading the movement. And that cuts out, like, in a country like New Zealand, that cuts out easily 70% to 80% of potential recruits.
And so you're basically, basically left with a small pool of people who are supposed to be, you know, fronting the. The organization. And I saw the guy who was pushing this. He was, I don't know, it looked like he was in his thirties, maybe at least in his twenties, like he wasn't a high school student. So they clearly.
Because, and this is for socioeconomic reasons as well, which the government is largely responsible for. Is that especially young Mori men or, you know, I guess the teenage, teenage boys, they come from impoverished backgrounds or have, you know, they come from fatherless homes. Like, are they leading protest movements? Are they organizing protest movements in the streets? So if you look at who they're expecting to lead them, they're really thinning out the potential leadership because they've encouraged the destruction of the family in most of these minority communities. So that leaves out the boys. And then you look at the girls and like 50% of them have mental health issues because of, I guess climate change is. Belief has caused them to suffer anxiety and distress and who knows what else. So you're down to a very small potential pool of people who are actually allowed to stand up without being pulled down by the revolution. And it looks to me like they've just run out of potential people to lead the revolution.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: Well, I think also, I mean, let's be fair about this. This really is the domain of white liberal kids, I think. I mean, the, the Pasifika people, the Mori people that I know, they actually lead far more interesting and full and complete lives. They just. This is like boring. Why would I be doing this? It's, it's, as I said, it's a reflection, I think, of an existential crisis amongst their generation. And by the way, folks, if you can hear that storm in the background, that is at my end of things. The rain has kicked in big time. But yeah, I think it's, it's a. It is really not surprising to me that they don't have much of a future now that they've. Well, I don't even know if they would have had much of a future, would they? If they'd still tried to maintain the.
[00:45:03] Speaker C: Previous leadership, probably would not have made a big difference. I feel like if you destroy your organisation after you have a very successful event, like was the second biggest protest in New Zealand history, it's pretty hard to make a comeback.
And you pointed out as well, which I guess I should have mentioned as well, is that of these minorities who are supposed to be leading for these protests, many of them are actually from conservative families, where you go to Pacific families and many immigrant families and so on, these tend to lean more conservative as well. People who are going to be less interested in your revolutionary movement, as I pointed out, the ones that are more progressive tend to be the ones that suffer from very high social dysfunction. So, you know, with those things combined, it is basically, like I said, it leaves the white liberal kids with no identity. It's been stripped away from them as well, which is tragic. But that's.
Their parents are the liberal parents are the ones who have set them up for this. And now all they've got left is self loathing because they're white liberal kids who are well off and they're supposed to be like, they're the oppressor class. And so they need to. So they're not allowed to do anything because they're part of the oppressors.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Man, you cannot win. And on that happy note, I have to say, folks, you are always welcome within the conservative family because we also care about the environment, but we just believe you should actually get out there and make a difference. So, you know, don't tear down the trees, don't let corporations destroy the rivers and streams and actually spend good quality time with your family doing wholesome things and living a meaningful and blessed and, you know, communal life together. And if more of us did that, then we probably wouldn't need to have as many protests because we wouldn't be so obsessed with consumerism and goods and globalisation and all the other things that drive the very issue that they fixated on, which is reducing the amount of carbon emissions. On that note, Dewa, the free episode is coming to an end. So folks, if you are not a patron, you are going to miss out on Monday's conversation. Don't forget, we're going to be talking about Donald Trump, the controversy surrounding his abortion message, his clarification on his position on abortion. There's the issue of the brazilian supreme court censorship of Twitter six months into the Israel Hamas war. That's a very bloody conflict. Are we actually going to get genuine and reasonable accountability here?
And probably a whole lot more. But if you want to get access to that, become a $5 monthly
[email protected]. Leftfootmedia before we sign off the free to air episode Dewa, tell people how they can follow your work.
[00:47:35] Speaker C: Okay, well, after you've become a paying member of Leftfoot Media on the, on the Patreon account, you can also go and check out writeminds NZ for my weekly free articles. You can find me on the BFD, where I do a weekly column on Saturday mornings. If you're a subscriber of the BFD as well, and if you are a, if you make enough donations to reality check radio as well, then I can be back on air maybe sometime in the near future. But I usually would have a Friday morning show on reality check radio and I really hope that gets picked back up again. If you just want to follow my text commentary that basically all takes place on Twitter these days.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Twitter.com writemindsnz dewa thank you so much. If you're not a patron, it's time to go, patrons. We'll see you on Monday. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Dispatches with Dewa. If you don't want to miss out on part two of our conversation, which is available exclusively to our patrons only, then make sure you go to patreon.com forward slash leftfortmedia and sign up to become a $5 monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes. Thanks once again for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth, and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the dispatches.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: When I was young, my daddy said, gotta keep one eye opening your bed, trigger fingers, stay prepared. I've got my weapon and I got my prayers. Cause if you don't run this town, they'll walk all over you.
Run out la, gotta run on, keep on until the sun goes down. Run out la, better run on, run all day till you can be found. Run out la, gotta run on, keep on running to the sun goes down.
You can outrun the devil, but you ain't gonna outrun me.
