Setting: Motueka, Nelson-Tasman, the South Island of New Zealand, AD 2028.

Horatio Bundy, Hozza to his mates, a hops grower and owner of Bundy Hops Farm, is about to lose his property because his monthly mortgage payments have been increased by 300%. His bank informed him this was because he'd been downgraded to the status of 'untrustworthy customer', following a change to his government-controlled 'RealMe Community Reputation Rating' -- this in turn happened because he made a Facebook post critical of New Zealand's Prime Minister, which was deemed 'objectionable' by the New Zealand Office of Censorship and Information Management (NZOCIM). At the urging of several of his friends and colleagues, he has called a community meeting to discuss this unfortunate turn of events.

HB: 'Thanks for coming out here today folks, and thanks for all the messages of support. But in truth this isn't really about me .. I'm just a test case, and if they can get away with shutting down my business just because I made a sassy post about Dear Leader on Facebook, comparing her to a horse -- and I stand by that post -- they'll be coming for all of you next, if you dare step out of line with the agenda they have planned. The first speaker today is going to be Chris Armstrong. Most of you will know him as the bloke who runs Motueka Fridge Repairs, and a bit of a larrikin if I may say so myself, but if you've ever spoken to him down at the local Sprig and Fern, you'll know he's pretty up on current affairs and politics, and quite an informed character in general. He even knows a bit about the history of ancient Egypt. In any case, he's a lot better qualified than me to speak about the lay of the political land we're entering into right now, and we appreciate him taking the time to say a few words today. Get up here Chris, ya bastard.'

Chris, taking the mic: 'Alright Hozza, get of here, ya maniac. But seriously, folks. We're in a pickle right now, and this latest episode with poor Horatio about to lose his property is only a small symptom of a deeper-lying problem, in a word, political centralisation. Decentralisation is the answer, and that means independence for the South Island.

To the average South Islander, the demand for South Island independence appears brusque, rather uncouth and more to the point redundant, since we effectively conceive of ourselves as a self-contained country within a broader union already, and have always been allowed to operate as such. There has been cause for complaint at various stages along the way, but by and large, people are satisfied with being in 'the unitary state' arrangement with the north and don't see a need to do anything so drastic as break away and form a separate republic. These people would view the situation differently, however, if they understood the seismic shift that has occurred in national politics in this century. The metaphor of Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff in one of the old Warner Bros cartoons, and continuing to barrel forward by sheer momentum and obliviousness, defying gravity for one long second after another, before eventually succumbing to the laws of gravity and plummeting, is appropriate. There never was anything like solid legal ground beneath the floating cloud-utopia that Te Waipounamu represented over the past 170-odd years. Geography, a protected status as favoured colony of Britain, and the honeymoon effect of being colonists in 'a New World', meant that for over a hundred years we were preserved from the worst ravages of internal corruption and external geopolitical threats. This artificial idyll being all that South Islanders have known, they naively formed the belief that it is some sort of immutable default setting. They assume that the conditions of the 1980s will continue for the duration of the 21st century and beyond, without any effort on our part or any change in the way we do things. Sadly, this belief is completely unfounded.

The good news is that our goals can be realised and our envisioned idyllic scenario for the future can be manifested, it will just require some tweaks to our legal system. Simply put, we have to become conscious of what we like about our environment -- using environment in the broadest possible sense here, to include the legal, moral and political environment - and then 'bake in' protections of these features into the legal system.

For example, South Islanders in general like to speak their minds, and are not particularly fussed with stopping other people from voicing divergent opinions. This is all well and good. The mistake is in thinking that we don't need to 'bake in' legal protections of free speech in order for our culture of tolerance and our thriving marketplace of ideas to continue. As I said, and I realise this is a generalisation, but most South Islanders are not much for language policing. It's not really a thing down here. 'So how is that going to become a problem?' some will ask. 'We don't need to legislate for it'. You'd be right, except that there's this little thing called Auckland centralisation.

For anyone who hadn't already noticed this, if you think about it, rather obvious fact, the Auckland elites control our central government, and have done so since 1984. But wait, let me back up a bit and give some broader context, before I address the state of politics in New Zealand in the year 2028.

New Zealanders are natural provincialists, and each and every New Zealander is enamored with his or her own province, be it Canterbury or Otago, Taranaki, Auckland or Wellington, first, rendering whatever reverence, affection and loyalty which might be due to the unitary state, New Zealand, second. That being the case, the Hansard records of the 19th century describe a continual battle between the different provinces, each accusing the other of overstepping their bounds and trying to tyrannise over their neighbour or neighbours. It's fair to say that Auckland (in an era when that name designated not just a city but a province) was the worst offender in this regard, and early on showed domineering and despotic tendencies which met with the ire and disapprobation of the other provinces. This is one of the reasons that the South Island was on the verge of separating and forming a separate colony in 1865, relenting only when the north agreed to move the capital from Auckland to Wellington, where it remains to this day -- a striking physical testament to the South Island's desire to be out from under Auckand dominion.

Yet, fast forward 150 years or so, and we have arrived at a point where a South Island man or woman awaits word from Auckland to know whether they can open their business, visit their loved ones or even step foot outside of their own house. True enough, this is justified by an elaborate pretext, and involves the cooperation of Communist China and corrupt international bodies such as the World Health Organization -- yet, regardless of how much credence you give to the 'medical emergency' cover story that has been force-fed to us by mainstream media since 2020, the fact is, Auckland centralisation, the rule of all the other provinces by a single province, has arrived. (To put it more precisely, it is the rule of all the people in all the provinces, including Auckland, by one tiny group of self-serving elites, the Auckland political class).

The Auckland elites control our laws and therefore they control our lives. The 'gentleman's agreement' by which the north, in view of our economic importance to the union, allowed the South Island to effectively govern our own affairs, even though we had technically ceded parliamentary power entirely to the north, has been definitely violated, and is now null and void. It is worthless as a guarantee of our freedoms, our prosperity and our way of life. If we don't gain the ability to make our own laws, we're going to have to live under the control of Auckland, or rather under the control of the Auckland political class. That means our values will not prevail in this century, the features we prefer for our local environment will not prevail. Instead, our environment, how we live our lives, how we do commerce and even, in this age of mass media and mass surveillance, how we speak and think, along with how our children and grandchildren speak and think, will be shaped by the vision and preferences of the Auckland elites. They, in turn, act largely as puppets of the world oligarchy -- but this is a topic for another day.

How would I, in a nutshell, describe the vision of the Auckland elites for the environment of New Zealand? Well it's very simple. They want to extend the environmental parameters they have imposed on the city of Auckland to the whole of New Zealand. Auckland is a prison city; Aotearoa New Zealand is to be a prison country. And we will be the prisoners and they will be the wardens. And we will also have to be wardens against one another part of the time. Because that's the Auckland elites' preferred model of government. They don't want free citizens, criticising them, holding them to account, exposing their corruption and challenging them. They want guilty prisoners who are locked down and who, because they have been declared guilty in the eyes of the law, effectively have no rights and therefore can be easily controlled.

Pro-criminalisation is demonstrably the political philosophy of the Auckland elites. That's the idea of recent legislation such as the GCSB Bill, the AML-CFT Act, the hate speech laws, the COVID Act, where ordinary and conventionally protected activity -- simply expressing an opinion, gathering with other people, opening your business, walking your dog in the park -- is made criminal. It turns every citizen into a criminal at the outset, and then the establishment can just pick and choose where to enforce it, go after any political opposition with their readymade pretext. This way they can bring about near-total conformity, or such is the plan.

Thus we see one possible outcome, one way the 21st century will look in the South Island, if we keep going down the road of Auckland centralisation.

However, I dont want to spend too much time talking about the Auckland elites or central government, because this isn't about them. It's about us. It's about what we, the South Island, want for our communities in this century, and what the best way is to get there. The goal is to build on and accentuate the values of the South Island culture and to draw on them to respond creatively and in our own distinct way to the challenges of the new era.

I mentioned the free speech issue. I consider free speech to be a South Island value. And whether the average Aucklander values free speech or not -- I suspect many of them do -- the fact is that the Auckland political class do not. Indeed, they have contempt for it. We've seen proof of this in recent legislation passed, most notably the updated hate speech laws, and the COVID Supplementation Act. So already we see an incompatibility between a fundamental value of our South Island society and a law that is imposed on the people of this society from up north, according to alien standards. None of this makes sense, and none of this can continue for too long without serious detrimental effects.

I think this is the best part of the world to live in and you're all the best people on the planet as far as I'm concerned. There's no one else I'd rather have as my friends, neighbours and business partners. This community and the whole of the South Island has massive potential and we're meant to realise that potential in this century, not piss it down the drain because some megalomaniacs up north want to play games with our inheritance. Keep your chin up Hozza, we're all behind you, and they're not going to take you or this community down without a fight.'

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