Jacinda Ardern’s plummeting popularity indicates a country questioning not only her racist white-anting of our democracy, but the hypocrisy of her kindness and well-being mantras. Her repeated emphasis on ‘well-being’ on which she stressed her intent to focus, instead of on GDP – when introducing her budget in 2019 – is apparently an important part of the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s ‘Great Reset’ agenda.

New Zealanders have been sold a pup. The economic, mental and emotional well-being of New Zealanders has been far from prioritised by her Labour coalition doing extraordinary damage – and determined on more of the same, judging from the controversial legislation it continues to ram through.

Ardern herself remained president of the International Union of Socialist Youth over a year after election to Parliament, subsequently becoming a WEF Young Global Leader. In its basic aim for world government, WEF intends that global leaders commit to taking responsibility for (i.e. virtually ruling) their countries. Our Prime Minister’s 2019 address to the WEF Davos meeting in Switzerland made plain her intent to entrench reforms leading to permanent change. Few New Zealanders realise that, to this end, she committed to a WEF artificial intelligence pilot programme, ‘spearheading a multi-stakeholder, evidence-based policy project in partnership with the Government of New Zealand’ – and that ‘The project aims at co-designing actionable governance frameworks for AI regulation’.

It would be a mistake to simply shrug off this as impenetrable gobbledygook. It facilitates an attack on our democratic processes – particularly given that Ardern regards our political parties recycling terms in office as ‘one of the biggest threats we have’.

This chilling statement is that of an ambitious leader antipathetic to people’s democratic choices. Not only is she pushing for neo-tribal rule over the country, and for the three-year parliamentary electoral cycle to be extended to four years, she also wants her hard-left government’s destructive policies ‘to endure beyond us as individuals’.

As recently as September 2021, addressing the United Nations, Ardern favoured adopting and implementing ‘an ambitious and transformational post-2020 global biodiversity framework’ – claiming untruthfully, that ‘New Zealand is committed to this’. We have not even been consulted. She has no mandate for continued assertions that New Zealanders are behind her. And what does she mean by stating that ‘we must not use the post-Covid recovery to return to business as usual’. Business as usual? Because of her government’s draconian control measures, thousands of businesses have been ruined – individuals and livelihoods destroyed beyond any chance of recovery.

Ardern’s Labour government has turned a blind eye to the sheer cruelty underpinning so much current policy. In this benighted country we have had a lottery with a totally inadequate number of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) places periodically opened for New Zealanders desperate to get home – some no longer with jobs, or being unable to pay rent overseas.

Yet her government closed off this applications procedure, refusing to commit to when more MIQ facilities would become available for those forced to quarantine, coming into the country. But what democratic country can refuse to allow its own citizens to enter? It’s been a familiar pattern, happening worldwide, access denied to dying relatives, as with a New Zealander recently forced to watch on a video link his mother dying in Ireland.

However, the pregnant New Zealand journalist in Afghanistan refused entry, applying for Taliban protection, now has a placing, as a result of pressure. And as a result of a nationwide protest spearheaded by National MP Chris Bishop, the government has been forced to change tactics, to allow staged entry times for vaccinated New Zealanders, then others across the world, to self-isolate, with no longer any need to be imprisoned in MIQ facilities guarded by the military.

Pressure can go the other way with Ardern refusing to comment on claims her fiancé, Clark Gayford, tried to get rapid antigen tests for his musician friends, despite their not being eligible. Questions had already been asked why international DJs were conveniently allocated places in MIQ when fully vaccinated New Zealanders were still denied entry. The incident reported by a pharmacist involved a group of vaccinated musicians requesting these tests. When informed that Ministry of Health rules required them to instead get a laboratory-based PCR test, they contacted Gayford who reportedly told the pharmacist there had been a change in guidance and these people should be given RATs – which was quite wrong. Gayford subsequently apologised for ‘any issue of confusion this may have caused to pharmacy staff’, but did not respond when asked directly whether it was appropriate for him to be giving pharmacies health advice.

For any political leader invoking well-being to be overseeing so many sad or disgraceful incidents where people have been treated shockingly is unforgivable. What about the nightmare of a scheduled ten days in MIQ turning into 40 days and nights for a family catching Covid in turn, constantly having their imprisonment goalposts extended while restricted to two hotel rooms, and being allowed in an exercise yard for only thirty minutes a day? No wonder the children struggle, one little girl bursting into tears and crying she just wanted to go home – when told another 14 days lay ahead. Utterly inhumane – when they could be isolating at home.

What of pensioners trapped overseas beyond the permissible date allowed, refused entry, threatened with having to pay back their pensions? What about the Kiwi hailed as a hero in an attempted robbery in 2019? His family of five left their Australian jobs last year, removing children in school, to return home to his dying mother. With the closing of our borders, they move from family to friends, living on their savings.

Where has the concern been for the well-being of so many needy individuals desperate, even ill, both physically and mentally, being denied the ability to simply come home – even by self-isolating?

The Ardern government’s forced move to enable home quarantine and open the borders is too little, too late. Its staged and delaying tactics are typical of the over-control exercised for so long.

New Zealanders are not going to forget that the plight of so many of our people was simply ignored by this mistress of well-being.