Coalition of Chaos – the Ardern Files

This project is under construction. Scoll down for links to various years.

Notes on content

• As per the “Offensive Content”, this is intended to be something of a summary of the disasters of the Labour government, with a smattering of “this was interesting in passing” thrown in.
• What counts as “this is interesting” varies, and is totally up to me and how I felt at the time. I’ve included a lot of stuff around minor parties and most stuff around National NZ politics. I’ve excluded a lot of posts (for example) around Euthanasia as DPF was quite keen on that one and I am not. Often, if a topic has been in the news at the time, I’ll see the old post and leave it in.
• This is not a complete list of postings, even for NZ politics at the time. I’ve excluded a lot of posts about ACT and TOP simply because they’re not especially relevant to what I’m trying to do.
• The Ardern/Chippie administration has been notable in that, while they have similar ideological goals to the Helen Clark administration, they have absolutely none of the general competence that signified Helen Clark’s leadership. These pages are my attempt to show just how bad that incompetence was, for those who forgot.
• It is not a complete list of everything that happened, nor an unbiased perspective. Indeed, it is more biased than reading Kiwiblog generally, as I have generally chosen the “juiciest” quotes which sometimes don’t reflect the post as a whole.
• I’ve used Kiwiblog because DPF is 1) well connected 2) fairly well respected compared to many bloggers. If you somehow spot something that’s not included on a given day because DPF did not post on it, do feel free to email me whatever content that is missing and I will consider including it.

Notes on formatting.

• After making a start, I have changed approaches to speed up the process. Bullet point posts (without date) are old way, Table with dates is new. Either way, they should be in chronological order.
• While previously I recorded as I read through the pages in order this was proving time consuming. So I have changed to dumping out the titles in bulk then reading through to remove irrelevant ones and add quotes etc. This should hopefully ensure *something* gets posted much earlier than otherwise.
• After initially publishing these pages, I decided to merge most years into single year pages rather than by quarter. This makes it easier to search for a given topic or keyword.
• Changes will be made, so don’t be upset if you find a page looks different if you come back at a later date. There are some months, and part-months that use the old format (bullet points). I started in Febuary 2017, skipped to what should have been the election date, went back to before the election and then gave up and dumped everything. Maybe I’ll fix it, maybe not.
• Generally, there are 3 sorts of quotes.
  • DPF’s comments – may be “in quotes”, but often won’t.
  • Material quoted in the post appears in italics
  • My personal comments [appear like this, with my “initials” -S1] May also be in italics to contract to post.
• There are also comments like indicating the post is a video etc. Or [long post] indicating that the post contains a lot more material and one short quote does not do the material justice

Pages Published so far:

Q1/2 2017 – Labour is in Chaos, considers appointing Jacinda Leader

Q3 2017 – Election campaign and election day

Q4 2017 – Election aftermath and first chaotic weeks.

Full Year 2018 – 100 days of chaos, Bill English resigns and a new leader is elected [in progress, working forward currently finishing April]

Full Year 2019 – [in progress – minimal edits]

Full Year 2020 – COVID!!! [in progress – not edited]

Full Year 2021 – [in progress – not edited]

Full Year 2022 – [in progress – editing back from newest]

Full Year 2023 – Ministers leaving, Justice minister arrested and run up to election [in progress – editing back from newest, which are added every few weeks]