Steve Braunias: The secret diary of . . . Simon Bridges

Simon Bridges is starting his crusade against the Woke Police. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

MONDAY

Wake up screaming. Nightmare that the Woke Police have taken over the country and invaded our minds.

Get up and walk to the kitchen. Mind racing while I stand there bathed in the refrigerator light. Reach in and drink milk straight from the carton. It clears my head. That was no nightmare – New Zealand really is a Woke Police state.

Someone should call it out. Someone who has no responsibilities. Someone who has lost everything.

A voice spoke to me from the fridge. To ordinary ears it sounded like the high-pitched whine that happens when you leave the fridge door open too long but in my heightened state of awareness I heard it say, "Mate, like you said, you've got nothing left to lose, and anyway it's not as though sitting on the Opposition benches gives you anything constructive to do, so go for it."

And then it added, "There's some nice cold cuts behind the tomatoes."

TUESDAY

Walk out of Parliament screaming. I gave Trevor Mallard a piece of my mind. Called him a twat. That's not exactly news to anyone but it felt like a good rehearsal for my real mission of standing up against the Woke Police. That mission starts tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY

The headlines are screaming. My mission has begun – and I went straight to the very top. I called out Police Commissioner Andrew Coster as a "wokester".

It's shaken things up and I sense a revolution in the air. But I can't do it single-handed. I need an ally.

THURSDAY

Simeon Brown is screaming. He's sitting with me at a Select Committee at Parliament and the two of us have got the Police Commissioner on the ropes.

Coster does nothing real or substantial to tackle the severe problems caused by gangs. Gangs are out of control in New Zealand. Their numbers are rising and their power is increasing thanks to the massive amounts of money generated by the methamphetamine trade. But the best Coster can come up with is Operation Tauwhio, which promises to target gang members with firearms.

"We can't arrest our way out of the gang problem," Coster told the Herald last week. Well that would seem like a pretty good place to start. I asked him at the select committee, "Do police still arrest criminals in New Zealand?"

He didn't like that. He started talking about "policing about consent", and Black Lives Matter, and so forth. It was very revealing. Because what we're seeing here is a police force that's much less about arrest, and much less about catching gangs and criminals, and much more about being hip and doing things to impress a bunch of other wokesters.

FRIDAY

The woke left are screaming. They want my head on a stick. Judith Collins is screaming. But she already put my head on a stick last year.

I will not be silenced. Someone needs to stand up and be counted. Someone needs to make themselves heard. I will fight the Woke Police with my last breath. I will keep screaming, screaming, screaming.