Why Can’t The Chicken Cross The Road?

Take the way home that leads back to Sullivan St.
Cross the water and home through the town
Past the shadows that fall down wherever we meet
Pretty soon I won't come around

Songwriters: Adam Fredric Duritz / Ben G Mize / Charles Thomas Gillingham / Daniel John Vickrey / David Lynn Bryson / Matthew Mark Malley / Steve Bowman.

Many Kiwis spend a lot of time commuting to work; public transport can be unreliable, and even a bit of rain can turn our motorways into parking lots. But one man is fortunate to live in a taxpayer-funded apartment just across the road from work. How lucky is that?

Unfortunately, the serial moaner that is our PM still found a reason to complain: those pesky bike lanes that made it impossible to navigate. Christopher Luxon has declared our business people negative, wet, and whiny, yet he complains about having to cross the road and risk encountering cyclists.

I found the following clip shared on Facebook; I don’t know who posted it, but I'm happy to update this and credit them if anyone knows.

Over the years, I’ve spent a bit of time in Wellington, and, without wanting to boast, I’ve never had any trouble crossing Molesworth Street. To be fair, the day the hīkoi arrived at Parliament, it took me a while to cross because of the crowd, but in my defence, I reckon it would have taken Christopher Luxon a lot longer to cross that day than it took me.

The good folks at Stuff investigated just how difficult it was to cross Molesworth Street, but it turned out to be pretty simple: a quick look left and right and then off you go, just the one cycle lane to worry about.

Crossing roads can be manageable with the right precautions, and if those checks felt a bit risky for the PM, he could always walk a bit further and cross at the pedestrian crossing. Failing that, he could drive across the road, but what sort of entitled prat would do that?

I guess he started as he meant to continue. A Mercedes to cross the road, Air Force flights to fundraisers, nothing is too good for CEO Man.

Hot on the heels of the oopsie daisy where someone removed any mention of Climate Change from the National Party curriculum, it seems they don’t want anyone learning a history different from what was taught to us back in the good old days. Back before we realised that such a one-sided, colonial-focused history did a disservice to Māori, to our history and to all of us.

When I studied history at high school, we learned about Benjamin Disraeli and the various factions in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, but we never learned about NZ’s history. I remember looking at exhibits on the NZ Wars at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and realising I knew more about the Franco-Prussian War or the Boer War than I did about my own country - and that doesn’t happen by accident.

Progress has been made in recent years in teaching our history, understanding Te Tiriti, and encouraging Te Reo; I find it incredibly sad that National and their coalition partners are so determined to roll it all back.

Christopher Burns, Auckland University of Technology lecturer in teacher education, said of the new curriculum, “The section on the New Zealand Wars states that ‘conflict grew because Māori and European settlers had different ideas about land, authority, and te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi’. This reduces the Government acquisition of Māori land by force to a kind of misunderstanding.”

It teaches students the falsehood that “rangatira signatories of te Tiriti ceded their existing authority”. I thought, who wrote this? Was it Don Brash? Māori never ceded sovereignty, but I understand why certain people might like that taught to children.

Te Tiriti is described “as a response to concerns about ‘lawlessness’ but not that it was lawlessness among British settlers”. If you’ve done even minimal reading, you’ll know it was a response to the behaviour of the colonisers, not the tangata whenua.

As for the fact that Climate Change was removed from the released curriculum, Professor Chris Eames, from the University of Waikato School of Education, called it a “travesty of omission, at a time where other countries are taking significant steps to include climate change in their curricula”.

He added, “We are woefully under-preparing our young people by disavowing the responsibility borne of creating climate change ourselves. This is very disappointing.”

I don’t know whether National is making these changes to boost its supporter numbers in years to come, but I find it appalling that Erica Stanford has overseen a curriculum that omits climate change and lacks a balanced view of history.

In contrast to the coalition whitewashing our curriculum and feeding our kids low-quality slop, the Greens announced a policy yesterday to ensure our kids have nutritious kai, to create local jobs with the sort of small businesses Seymour’s changes shut out, and to support local food producers.

.The Green Party’s election policy for free and nutritious school lunches will:

• Restore the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme, with lunches provided through schools or local providers to meet the needs of their students.

• Expand the programme to approximately 400 more schools, ensuring 150,000 more children enjoy a nutritious lunch every day.

• Fund the programme permanently to provide certainty for schools, whānau and local providers.

David Seymour said his “programme saved taxpayers more than $120 million by reducing the average per-student meal cost from $8.68 to $3.58. The Greens’ version of the scheme has the average price per meal of $6.50.” He continued, “No wonder the Greens want new taxes; they are prepared to spend three times as much getting the same result.”

Cool story, Dave, but some of us think our kids are worth more than being used to save money by providing the lowest-quality food for a profit, and you are definitely not getting “the same result”.

Marama Davidson said, “The goal of a school lunch programme should be providing nutritious school lunches to children, not exploiting Government contracts to prioritise profits and overseas shareholders over our tamariki. The Green Party’s school lunch programme will feed kids and local economies, not the pockets of corporations.”

You’ve got to wonder about the sort of Prime Minister who has difficulty crossing the road, an Education Minister who wants to dumb down the curriculum, and anyone who agreed that David’s dastardly dinners were a good idea.

Have a great Friday, all you lovely people.

To access all my writing, join the conversation, and support my mahi, subscribe here:

Alternatively, if you want to show your appreciation, you could “Buy Me a Coffee” as a one-off koha for any amount you like.

Buy Me A Coffee.

Ngā mihi,
Nick.

To end today, here are Counting Crows with Sullivan St from their album August and Everything After, my favourite album of all time.