Congratulations All Round

Congratulations are in order – not just for Jacinda and her government but for the average New Zealand voter as well. The last opinion poll shows that support for both the government and Jacinda has risen over recent weeks – and that suggests that voters have kept their wits about them, despite a sustained campaign by NZME and their outlets (principally the Herald, provincial newspapers and Newstalk ZB) to persuade them that the government’s handling of the pandemic has been nothing but a catalogue of errors and oversights.

For months now, the Herald has fed its readers a diet of criticism of everything the government has touched. Anyone with an opinion or a comment that shows the government in a bad light can be guaranteed unlimited column inches; on the other hand, the Herald has also repeatedly found space for its own items or interviews that show National party figures as supermen and women.

Fortunately for the health of our democracy, their readers seem to have been unconvinced by this extreme display of partisanship. They seem to have accepted that the government is having to work against unparalleled odds, and can claim a remarkable record of solid achievement, while the National party figures afforded so much time and space have done little more than posture and snipe.

Perhaps the most notable casualty of the latest poll is Act, and their leader, David Seymour, who seems to have paid the price for his disloyal bad-mouthing of New Zealand in an ill-judged article for the right-wing British rag, the Daily Mail.

Those of us who have feared for our democracy in the face of the Herald’s assault on it can, perhaps, now relax a little. The New Zealand voter is a solid citizen, made of sterner stuff than one might have feared. They have their own eyes and ears, and minds, to guide them through the trials and tribulations of recent times. They can work it out for themselves and are not easily misled by biased reporting. Well done, you!