Over on Kiwiblog DPF has a post up about Ministry of Health officials advising the government that not pursuing the extreme smoke-free goals of the previous Labour government is a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi

It’s so bad that even lawyer Graeme Edgeler – no Rightie he – had this to say about it:

Maybe Health Officials shouldn’t be responsible for giving advice about the Government’s Treaty obligations if this is going to be the standard. The first paragraph seems fine. The first sentence of the second is so overwrought, it undermines my confidence in the first paragraph.

The first paragraph being where they refer to Article Two of the TOW, guaranteeing “active protection of taonga, including wellbeing”.

DPF is even more blunt: “It is incredible that senior public servants tendered such advice.”

At which point I must disagree with DPF. It’s amazing to me that he can be part of the Wellington scene for many years, buried up to his neck in politics and still find this advise to be “incredible”.

No, actually it’s entirely to be expected and is yet another reason I fear for this National-led government getting much done beyond booting Labour laws. Beyond that lies the vast Administrative State – the one that lefty Danyl McLauchlan has written about and which DPF highlighted the other day, (Unjarndycing the State). It’s festooned with hundreds, likely thousands, of people who think like this. In the time of Labour anybody who thought differently was likely not hired.

And this is also why some sinking-lid policy on these bureaucrats, the preferred incrementalism of National during the Key era, will count for nothing in the end beyond being a speed bump for the Left.

These people need to be fucking fired or, if that’s not possible, sent to sit in some room where they’re given no work. Sure, it would be a waste of money but worth it compared to the damage they’ve done, are doing, and will continue to do over the next few years until their beloved Labour-Green-Te Patii Maori government becomes the government.

But more than that: it’s not just these MOH people. It’s the system that produced them. They are a product of a system of education and indoctrination that has been going on now for at least four decades, gathering speed and power with every year, minting thousands of young people who carry these ideas into their jobs and careers. And the entire system not only indoctrinated them, it nurtured them, encouraged them in this – and will protect them.

A decade from now there will simply be more people like this at the top of the Administrative pile and such advice will likely be accepted as being common sense.

That system must be dismantled but I see little or no desire or plans for such, whether from National, ACT or Winston First.

I’ll leave you with this comment from history:

I tell you, you have no other way to deal with these men, but to break them or they will break you.

Yea, and bring all the guilt of the blood and treasures shed and spent in this kingdom upon your heads and shoulders, and frustrate and make void all that work that, with so many years’ industry, toil and pains, you have done!

I tell you again – you are necessitated to break them.

Oliver Cromwell