Matt Bullen

Reading Mawera Karetai’s column (Beacon, May 6) made me chuckle, in fact, I almost spat my ethically sourced, environmentally aware green tea.

It did cause me to remember a saying I first heard during the dreaded Covid days.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

The article seemed to be a lecture, warning us all not to believe anything that Dr Karetai and others disagree with; that democracy is in trouble.

We can all have our opinions and free speech, as long as it’s the speech they approve of.

There are a group of folk who reside within the Beacon letters pages who absolutely despise the current government and all they do,

I’m sure you are all furiously typing your concerns to the minister of broadcasting, explaining to him why disbanding the BSA is such a dreadful thing to do, and while we wait for Maiki Sherman to lecture us all on the demise of the Orwellian thought police, well, that’s if we see Maiki again ... scuttlebutt has it, we won’t. (I’m sure Mei Heron will do a much better job).

The daily media panic of the fuel reserves is not a lot different to the Jacinda Ardern 1pm presser giving us all the daily Covid numbers.

I’m sure many of us still cringe at the thought of the screeching alarm that instructed us all to stand still and listen to the podium of truth telling us all what to believe.

Not that any of us knew what the fuel reserves were or even should be prior to Trump and Iran kicking off. But goodness, we’ve got only 50 days of petrol. Is that bad?

It’s almost hard for some to admit that National, which hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory, has finally read the room and realised that Act and NZ First are cutting its lunch in the polls and maybe, just maybe, Christopher Luxon and ilk are about to stand for something at long last.

Despite the media running tackle for the Labour Party since the 2023 election, the coalition has done some great work, and the numbers tend to suggest that it will be re-elected, although probably with very different proportions, which I’m sure will cause great grief and heartache over there to the left.

Te Paati Māori seem to be completely missing in action and the Greens are trying to work out how to hate Trump and support a terrorist regime that kills their own people for disagreeing with them; a regime that would throw many of their own caucus off the nearest tall building, if there were any tall buildings left, just for being gay.

At least they seem to have put the keffiyehs away.

Labour won’t even tell us what their policies are until after the election, so that’s promising.

I think we are all smart enough to discern what is worth reading, listening to or acting upon without needing advice or permission from some self-appointed arbiter of truth.

There are plenty of alternative sources of news and current events, many of which are far more reliable, honest and open than the traditional TV News or RNZ offerings.

Having grown up with an actual journalist in the house, I cringe at the current group of activists posing as reporters, the emotional stories and bent, biased advertorials being offered as news items.

I guess the market will decide, TV3 news is all but gone, TVNZ is facing another year of significant losses, new media like the Platform, The Centrist, Chris Lynch Media et al. are growing and taking a better share of social media and live interactions.

Of course they would; the others turn the comments off when they don’t like our response.

Free speech is the pillar of democracy; we must protect it, whether we agree with differing opinions or not.

I like Orwell’s quote – “Freedom is the right to say no.”