{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreibursd6pdynutvemg3euzalltmjloyi7u6f67rcaovrscx4xp5cgm",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:sl2hrcwo6voaorzsr26d3bo2/app.bsky.feed.post/3mh772ng4crh2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreie7ztp75whg6lt6ajefcmdmo3cppwhihlaxfied2nvlgpsz5axiey"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "size": 982478
  },
  "description": "Such are the skills of ‘the man who would be king prime minister’.",
  "path": "/the-man-who-would-be-king/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-16T19:30:39.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "**Pee Kay**",
    "No Minister"
  ],
  "textContent": "**Pee Kay**\n _No Minister_\n\nThe 1975 film _The Man Who Would Be King_ is an historical adventure film that is an adaptation of the famous short story by Rudyard Kipling, which tells the story of two ex-soldiers in India when it was under British rule. They decide that the country is too small for them, so they head off to isolated “Kafiristan” in order to become kings in their own right.\n\nMichael Caine and Sean Connery starring in the lead roles saw themselves as “noble thieves”, when in truth they were con-men, chancers, and fortune hunters. Most worryingly, they were completely blinded by their belief in their own superiority.\n\nIt is those two sentences that, to me, drew a correlation with another ‘man who would be king’.\n\nLabour maintains its polling lead this year, with the March Taxpayers’ Union results placing the party six per cent ahead of National. In the preferred PM race, Hipkins has pulled ahead of Luxon by a margin of 1.7 per cent. Hipkins, according to the polls, Hipkins is a man who could be king!\n\nHipkins’ spin doctors and the compliant MSM are energetically portraying him as a regular down to earth, focusing on the “bread and butter” issues, Cossie Club, Joe Average New Zealander. But we must not be fooled by the Joe Average persona.\n\nYou don’t have to scratch the surface too deeply to unearth the same: the range of political ideologies that seek to achieve a skewed ethnic equality, the same ‘we know best’ dogma and exactly the same innate ability to obfuscate and to equivocate as his predecessor.\n\nUnlike his primary opponent, Chris Luxon, Hipkins excels at speaking off the cuff. He conveys the impression of a leader fully in command of his brief, rarely stumbling over his words and providing sharp, immediate responses to journalists.\n\nBut, emulating his predecessor, Hipkins has some serious **F** for failure marks on his report card.\n\nHipkins was long hailed as Ardern’s ‘Mr Fixit’, the man tasked with steadying difficult portfolios. However, for perceptive observers, that label was at odds with a record of failures and incompetence that became increasingly visible throughout his career.\n\n**July 2020, to November 2020,** Hipkins was the minister of health. He took over as the interim health minister following the resignation of David Clark. Remember him? He was the government minister who felt he was entitled to drive his family 20km to go for a beach walk and then take a separate trip to a mountain biking track!\n\nHipkins as minster of health (and Mr Fixit) would have had his hands all over, if not the implementation certainly the design, of the Pae Ora Act that established a co-governed health system and proposed the Māori Health Authority be given the power of veto. The Pae Ora Act was intended to transform our health system in 2022 to improve Māori equity in the health system by establishing a “co-governed” approach based on partnership as “prescribed in the Treaty”.\n\nIt is worth noting that this new health system implemented **Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards** designed to provide local iwi and Māori voices directly into the national health system planning.\n\nInterestingly, while the coalition government, in 2024, dissolved the Pae Ora Act, Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards still exist within our health system, with 15 boards in operation across the country to bring a local, Māori-centred view to health service design.\n\nHipkins took charge as minister for Covid-19 response in late 2020, the vaccine rollout, whose responsibility ultimately sat with Hipkins, was hamstrung by a heavily bureaucratic framework that failed to scale up with any urgency. This administrative inertia resulted in a sluggish rollout, leaving vaccination rates dangerously low by mid-2021. Consequently, when the Delta variant arrived, the system’s inability to pivot quickly left the country vulnerable, forcing the government into prolonged lockdowns while the programme finally accelerated under intense public and clinical pressure.\n\nMatthew Hooton wrote following the second commission of enquiry report:\n\n> _Five years later, it’s easy for Hipkins to admit mistakes. They stare at him and all of us in the face. Sorry is the harder and more important word if he wants Aucklanders to forgive him – let alone any more of them to switch their vote back to Labour._\n\nFrom **14 June 2022 to 25 January 2023,** Mr Fixit was, again, asked by Ardern to take over a ministerial portfolio that was floundering, attributable to ministerial ineptitude. Hipkins took over the portfolio from Poto Williams as minister of police.\n\nAs minister of police, Hipkins faced a rising tide of crime and public concern over ram raids, with most criticism suggesting that he initially dismissed these concerns. With more than two ram raids every day in August 2022, it was clear the soft-on-crime Labour government and its woke Police Commissioner “Cuddles” Coster were failing to have any impact on a wave of violent crime!\n\nHipkins and the government were accused of creating a permissive environment where criminals believe they can operate with impunity.\n\nIn May 2022, the government announced a **$6 million Retail Crime Prevention Fund**. In all fairness to Hipkins, this was Poto Williams’ “solution”. But even in Hipkins’ hands more than 190 ram raids had taken place since Labour’s announcement, but only seven businesses have received a single cent from Labour’s fund. At one stage around 97 per cent of the fund remained unused.\n\n_“I expect the programme to ramp up over the next month. Police have been working through how they best support small businesses, particularly in Auckland, and are bringing on more assessors so they can work with more of them, more quickly,”_ said Hipkins.\n\nBut it is in education that Hipkins really left an indelible mark as a government minister! If you want to influence and change thoughts or actions, where do you start? Education and, in particular, the most impressionable: the younger generation.\n\nOne must wonder just how much guidance Hipkins received from his mother in his role as minister of education?\n\nNZ Council for Educational Research plays a significant role in providing the Education Ministry with new or refreshed curriculum. Their chief researcher is Rose Hipkins.\n\n**October 2017 until January 2023,** when he became prime minister, Hipkins, as minister of education, had control of the direction of the Ministry of Education.\n\nThis is the ministry, who on Hipkins watch, and ostensibly with his endorsement, had given the nation’s schoolchildren a radical, ‘decolonised’ history curriculum.\n\nNew Zealand’s education system was already in a parlous state, so why would you set about installing the vision of a minority into the centre of our education system? No formal approval from the public at large, just the radicals in positions of influence in education, ably supported by those in academia who are still unable to discern what is fact and what is fiction.\n\nThis is manipulating the minds of the young and can only be acknowledged as a radical and serious step with far reaching and extreme long-term consequences.\n\nA step too far in an effort to correct some perceived ethnic disadvantage by a minister receiving, impossible to ignore, ideological direction?\n\nAs minister of education, Hipkins absolutely secured the title of ‘King of Failure’ and fastened that crown with the implementation of the disastrous 2019 amalgamation of NZ’s polytechs – Te Pūkenga. A scheme so irresponsible it bankrupted polytechs and cost the country millions.\n\nTe Pūkenga gobbled up around $390 million in establishment costs and then in early 2026, over $325 million was transferred to 10 newly independent polytechnics for recapitalization.\n\nSuch are the skills of ‘the man who would be ~~king~~ prime minister’.\n\nAstute political commentator Ani O’Brien wrote recently:\n\n> _Looking ahead to the election, I have very little confidence that New Zealanders will be given the information they deserve. The narrative is already being constructed with Christopher Luxon portrayed as uniquely useless and unpopular and Chris Hipkins presented as the sensible alternative._\n\nShaking their head, a learned friend said, “ _Hipkins comes across as an endlessly delusional and devious politician… but worse, NZ voters are endlessly gullible to support him.”_\n\nThis article was originally published by No Minister.",
  "title": "The Man Who Would Be King",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-16T19:30:38.515Z"
}