Former NZ premier redux---back in The Conversation

The arrival of former New Zealand premier and United Nations topsider at the helm of her own foundation confirms the suspicion of many that she has been the hidden hand in a number of policy directions implemented by the governing Labour coalition led by her protégé Jacinda Ardern.

One of these is considered to be the declaration of the ban on oil & gas accreditation.

More recently still the releasing of the deliberations on a capital gains tax.

The capital gains debate, a perennial one in New Zealand political life, came at precisely the correct time to divert attention away from coalition over-promising notably in public housing.

The oil and gas ban had the effect of reinforcing the allegiance to the governing coalition of the parliamentary Green minority member.

These suspicions were still further reinforced when it became known that the priority of the Helen Clark Foundation is in the field of climate change.

Climate change is the over-arching article of adhesive faith in the Labour and Green coalition components of the government.

It is the centrepiece of a creed slate package that incorporates also such abstract objectives as diversity and multiculturalism along with the more tangible distrust of anglo saxon males as authority figures.

The Helen Clark Foundation has also indicated a preoccupation with “drug policy” which is code for the de-criminalisation of cannabis in various forms.

It was Helen Clark during her nine year stint as New Zealand prime minister who implemented and enforced a variety of smoking-in-public bans and who set the nation on its path to become utterly smoke-free.

Meanwhile New Zealand’s Taxpayers Union is fearful that the foundation will become a New Zealand version of the Clinton Foundation and will thus become the repository of public funds overt and covert.

The Taxpayers Union operates a mass email samizdat designed to by-pass the mainstream media’s enchantment with progressive policies and a corresponding reluctance to cast them in anything other than a rosy light

In outlining the role of their patron, Helen Clark, the foundation emphasises on its web site Miss Clark’s leadership in “inclusive and sustainable” development, “poverty eradication” along with the “full inclusion and empowerment of women in development.”

Helen Clark, the foundation site says “advocates for sexual and reproductive health rights, an end to violence against women and for LGBTI rights.”

The foundation points out that it is a broad church and its website invites the public at large to put their shoulder to its improving wheel.

The launching of the Helen Clark Foundation relatively early in the Labour–led coalition’s first term inevitably draws attention to the foundation’s stated determination to be politically independent, “non partisan.”

While it will be treated with kid gloves by the established media the acid-tongued and self-appointed public expenditure watchdog Taxpayers Union has put the funds-seeking foundation on notice.

The climatist priority agenda indicates a wanderlust, a jet-fuelled and publicly-funded one to faraway places, expensive ones, at which take place the international convocations which experience indicates are such an integral component to cutting back on carbon dioxide.