Shaun Newman Podcast - #280 - Chantelle Baker

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Independent journalist from New Zealand recounts the 23 day Wellington protest which happened soon after the Freedom Convoy. Chantelle live-streamed  the entire event and we discuss the what she encountered.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast⁠

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For more information, visit them at, Hancock Petroleum.com. She's an independent journalist from New Zealand. Her page is currently followed by 90 plus thousand people and she covered all 23 days of the Wellington protest. Talking about Shantel Baker. So buckle up. Here we go.

This is Shantel Baker and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Yes, we're all full of laughter today. I got Shantel Baker on. I can't seem to spit it out. But first off, thanks for. hop it on. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's awesome to be able to chat with you. Well, I got the opportunity last week to hop on yours. And I mean, I enjoyed myself. I thought you had,

I don't know what it is with women right now, but I think the women are just kicking ass and taking names. So to have you come back on and share a bit of the story of New Zealand and what you're seeing and, you know, for a lot of my listeners, we've stuck real close to home in Canada because there's been so much going on. And now that things have released just a little bit, you know, it was only a couple days ago that travel mandates are going to be suspended. And I am using the word suspended for the time being so people unvaccinated can travel and everything else. So we'll see what comes of that. But that opens up the opportunity to go a little more abroad and invite people like yourself on to discuss some things that are so close to home. So for the listener, you're from

New Zealand, but can you tell us a bit more about Shantel Baker? Yeah, absolutely. Do you know what it's funny? I don't really talk at all, even on my own pages, about my history or about my past. So it's kind of funny actually even going into it at all. But I like to say, I'm just an everyday New Zealander who got really fed up with what the media was saying and decided to do something about it. But I guess there's a little bit more to that. I do have a background where I've worked in digital marketing and kind of started to question a lot of the COVID pieces because it seemed very, very, I would say, it was just very programmed and I didn't like the way that they were manipulating

people using language and everything was overly simplified. And I just thought they were treating people as if they were stupid from a marketing perspective. And then on the other side, from the political perspective, my dad was the ex-leader of the new Conservative Party here in New Zealand. And so I helped on his campaign a little bit doing his marketing for him just online. and as I started to see how much the media would manipulate the truth about him, and that kind of gave me a much wider idea of how deep things were and how much the problem was here in New Zealand

when it comes to having properly independent media or media that even just want to know the truth in general. So that's kind of what got me started. I made one video about a year and a half ago maybe, or over a year ago with my dad talking about how I could see that the vaccine passes could program people and lead them into a social credit system. And that blew up here in New Zealand

were quite a small country. So, you know, it just got quite far and I started getting messages from lots of different groups and organizations and that was really interesting. And after that, I started my own page, did lots of videos, all about media, and then ended up in the Wellington protests.

We live streamed every day of the Wellington protests where heaps of New Zealanders, apparently, oh, sorry, thousands and thousands of them flooded to our, parliament and then they camped there for 23 days so i live streamed every day of it and got um quite a lot of publicity from doing that just because there was there were not many people that did independent media here in new zealand so yeah that's my background well i appreciate that you know um i i think

for the average canadian and i'll even simple i'll even go smaller the average alberton uh new Zealand is like, well, I think Alberta is 2.5 times the size, like land size of New Zealand. But the population of New Zealand is roughly 5 million. So it's very similar to what Alberta is. Right. We just got, we got space. You guys are on an island. Like when this, when COVID lockdowns hit, you know, like, I remember the news coming from New Zealand of you had one COVID case. We're locking everything down. And I remember going like, holy. Dinah, that is crazy. And I mean, here we have space to go and drive and everywhere else, right? At times, it doesn't feel like that, but we truthfully do. Could you lead us through some of the things from the New Zealander, you know, perspective in COVID? Absolutely. In terms of the lockdowns,

I think with the first one, it was very reactive, right? People were trying to understand what was going on. The concept of a lockdown was really far-fetched. And everyone was told it was a only going to be for two weeks. And then obviously that got extended and extended. And then they entered different types of systems. They entered traffic light systems. But part of it, with the initial lockdown, people weren't allowed to leave their houses. So they were allowed to leave their houses, but they were only meant to go out on walks to the park, that type of thing. They weren't meant you weren't meant to go outside of the city. So you were kept within quite a tight, confined space. And we've got a huge problem with family violence here in New Zealand. We're

one of the worst countries for when it comes to family violence and domestic violence, particularly towards children. So there were a lot of concerned people about what that would mean for our country and for the problems that we're facing, and none of those were listened to. We had military out on the streets stopping people and not questioning them about where they were going. People weren't allowed to fly from the North Island to the South Island. And everyone was given about 24 hours before we went into the initial lockdown by memory. So it's not long to try and organize your entire life and then what are social services meant to do and they can't actually reach people. So from that end, it was very confined. And then when we entered traffic light system,

it was almost, it's just very, it's hard to explain how they came to the idea that the traffic light system was going to be effective. Because you've got all these people that are allowed out and about for specific reasons, other people that aren't allowed to go anywhere. And it just, it didn't make sense from a scientific perspective, but it also doesn't make sense based on the social issues that we face here in New Zealand. So it was unusual seeing army officers out and about. Oh, sorry. Yep. No, can you explain the traffic light system here? We didn't have that. So maybe could you just expand on the idea around it, like what the traffic light system meant? Yeah. So what they would do is they would put different towns or different areas into under and into the traffic. light system, so either red, orange or green. However, we, I live in a place called Christchurch. We had no COVID and yet we were under the red traffic light system. So I wasn't allowed, as someone that decided not to get vaccinated, I wasn't allowed into a cafe to buy a coffee. They would, some stores would do takeaway. Other stores just wouldn't let you in at all,

even though takeaway was meant to be allowed. And so I couldn't go out to a bar, I couldn't go out to a restaurant, nothing like that, but anyone that was double jabbed was allowed to. then they had other restrictions such as even if you were jabs and you were allowed inside the restaurant, how many people were allowed inside that restaurant or allowed inside that bar. But again, these restrictions didn't make sense because they were putting towns under red traffic light system so unjabbed couldn't go anywhere based off of the notion of no COVID. So we didn't have any COVID yet we couldn't go anywhere. And it was really just a marketing exercise to try and convince people to get the jab.

And they know that. We've actually got official Information Act requests that we've done where it's shows and they talk about the fact that it's not, it can't even be based on a public health issue. So they were just trying to convince people to get the jab, which is, I think, quite disgusting really to try and push people into a medical decision not based on informed opinion, but they did it through using social pressure. So the orange traffic light system was a little bit more relaxed version of the red traffic light system. So people could go into more areas. They could have more people in certain areas, so events could go on. And then green traffic light,

everything's meant to be opened up. However, what the government did here, and I don't know if they did it in Canada as well, the documents that we have from the government shows that they had the Privacy Commissioner telling them that they were worried that private businesses would adopt the vaccine mandates and it would go far beyond what the government's intentions were with the mandate. So the government only ever mandated a few areas, but private businesses mandated so many people, nearly every single industry nearly was mandated. because private businesses chose to do so. The government knew that they would do that,

and they didn't do anything to stop it. But now what it means is that the government is completely absolved of any accountability. And so now people can go after the private businesses and take them to court and they can win, and the government will just be like, oh, well, we didn't mandate it, even though they put a huge amount of pressure on them

and they made it seem like they had to. So it's just really, really snaky. And I think they did it in a brilliant way of absolving any kind of. liability on themselves and just putting it straight back on the private business owners. But again, why are they trying to cripple private businesses? It's eerie the similarities between governments, isn't it? Like, I mean, from our chat last week to this week, now hearing kind of the flip side

of what the New Zealand government did, continues to do, trying to talk things through problems, how they handled their population. It's eerie. Like, it's really eerie how they pushed on. people to make these, you know, to make coercion seem normalized on people to make a medical decision. And to push it on all the private businesses and all the corporations and everything else. Yeah, I mean, we certainly saw that in Canada. The United States certainly saw that. And it just was a trickle-down effect from there. It's interesting. I was actually reading up on

Monkeypox the other day. And there's a university professor based, and I think it is the University of Pennsylvania. And he actually did a big study on monkeypox and smallpox. And his teachings are part of the reason why the COVID restrictions were placed on areas because he did testing in a red traffic light system, red, orange and green. And he tried passes. And this was part of his own research when it came to smallpox, was he trialled passes on people having to register where they went and contact tracing. And this is all his research. He's now been cited in over 40 studies when it came to COVID. So it seems like it starts there. A lot of his work was funded by the NIH, Anthony

Fauci. So it seems like he was kind of one of the founding fathers when it came to the COVID restrictions and legislation. But again, this wasn't in real world practice. This is just simulated studies. Yeah, it's what I love about independent journalists is their ability to see the ties, right? Well, we can talk about this little tie, right? I literally just had Alison Royal on this past week, an independent journalist now in the States. And she talks very openly about Bill Gates being one of the things. And a lot of her colleagues said if she'd been in mainstream corporate media, that essentially she would have been pushed to fact checker on the story. They wouldn't let her run with it because you can't talk about certain things.

What I love bringing on independent journalists is you get to have an open conversation about things. And what you start to see is the ties and how everybody's linked together. You're like, wow, that shouldn't be a complete conflict of interest. And yet nobody talks about that. And they allow it to go on. And governments allow that to go on. And it seems so strange to the average person, especially when we start talking about it. You're like, yeah, that's a complete conflict of interest. Like we would be held to a different standard than what the governments are holding. Yeah, absolutely. But they can get away with it. And they can get away. with it through all of the back channels of communication that they have. And I can say that honestly,

because our ex-prime minister from how many years ago was it now, I think she finished in about 2014. Her name was Helen Clark. Oh no, it would have been way earlier than that, but her name was Helen Clark. She's one of our ex-prim ministers. She then went to the UN. She's actually worked for, she's got a foundation called the Helen Clark Foundation. And she's on the board of all of these major organizations. One of them is a global leadership forum where she connects. world leaders and ex-world leaders secretly. And their website says this. They said they do it confidentially and privately.

She's linking information with all of these world leaders and ex-world leaders. So why is the public not privy to good information and where they're learning from? Because at the end of the day, they're learning from other people that are corrupt and they've got all of these secret bodies or not so secret bodies. I mean, she's got this on her website that that's where she's on the board. how are we meant to know what is in future for our country, and let alone if that's what we actually want. If we've democratically elected a leader

and then they're going and working with a whole lot of people that we've not elected, and they're doing it behind closed doors, and there's no communication with the public about the response from that, it's really concerning. And again, it's one of these things that no one in legacy media likes to discuss or bring up as a topic of concern.

Why do you think that is? Money? You've got to follow the money. I mean, for us, we've got a thing called the Public Interest Journalism Fund. They've just dumped another 300 million into it. For a country that's only got 5 million people, there's astronomical amounts of money from the government that are being pumped through on the basis of giving them public interest journalism. I mean, I don't know what's more in the public interest is our journalists being brought off or actually having the stories that affect the public. It's crazy to me. It's absolutely crazy. And they say, oh, the public interest journalism is only for specific projects. If someone's pumping $20 million into your business, they are going to have a say over what your business does. To say anything else is just naive, but also it comes with contingencies

that they're not allowed to speak negatively against some of the government policies. CBC here in Canada got 600 million, you know, or legacy media, I guess, got 600 million. It's complete, well, that doesn't, you know, that's a complete conflict. of interest once again, right? Like now the journalists aren't going to speak about what the government's doing or they're certainly going to bide their time. No, no, fire away. Well, I think we're up at about

$450 million, taking into account the last few million that have been, well, a few hundred million that have been given to them. So for a population outside, it is astronomical. And these are companies that are dying out. So this isn't an investment for the public. However, I do think that the problem is people don't want to fund independent journalism either. Like, and you, and you, would know this is very difficult to try and get the public to fund projects because again you're asking from people that often don't have that much to give and so then i can see why they've gone down getting government funding but i'm just really concerned about the direction new zealand is going in and the fact we've spent another hundred million just on covid advertising alone if they know that that

money is going to be pulled out of their revenue if they speak out against the government they're never going to Yeah, and that's probably, right, what you just said there is maybe the most terrifying thing, right? Is you getting money and now as a media organization, you can't talk about what's like sitting right in front of your eyes, like that everybody can see. You're just going to keep reiterating the same messages over and over and over again while everybody's staring at it going like. This makes no sense. And of course, there's going to be some people that buy right into it and love it. But over time, like the fact you can't talk about different things, other than what they're pushing is wild until, you know, the money aspect of it.

I mean, one problem we've got in New Zealand is we've got a massively failing healthcare system currently. Our staff are under enormous amounts of pressure. We don't have enough staff whatsoever. And because they've mandated healthcare, even though barely any other industries are mandated at the moment, teachers aren't mandated nothing. So these healthcare workers can go mix with unvaccinated people wherever they go, but then they go back to work and everyone has to be vaccinated. And it's crazy because what it means is that we've got thousands of nurses and doctors and surgeons who are now no longer working which then reduces the amount of beds in our hospitals and the media just go oh we've got a hospital staff shortage because they're going to

Australia for better pay I'm like maybe a tiny majority of them are going to Australia but you've got thousands and thousands that are here and want to work and you're not allowing them to the media is culpable I believe in these vaccine passes as well because if they started speaking against them the public pressure and the backlash would be significant and the government would have to drop them. So the media have created this beast and then complain about it. It's completely hypocritical. Well, here in Canada, we have, it was a lot, just in Alberta, let alone the rest of the country, tons of healthcare workers that were essentially forced out with the vaccine mandates and that type of thing. And then we're asked to come back because,

you know, now there's shortage and everything. And I can't figure out, Chantelle, you've dug into all these different topics. Is it short-sightedness on the government? Is that planned on the government? What are your thoughts on when it comes specifically to health care workers? Like, it makes zero sense. They were through the entire pandemic. And then to push them so far to wear a bunch from like, no, I'm not doing it. And so they get forced out, which creates, it's a man-made shortage. Like everybody could see that, which causes more strife and everything else because now you don't have enough staff to work the hospitals? It's really difficult because I like to say things that we've got verified information on.

And I can't say that they're doing this on purpose if I don't have that verified information. But none of the stats are going in favor of the government, none of them are working out. The passes have been dropped everywhere. We've seen from international studies and international countries that this doesn't work. But we keep doing it. I mean, I didn't at the beginning of this, I didn't want to think that it was premeditated, but as the days go on, it seems more and more that it is premeditated. We even had our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardun, got up and said that she was not thinking about COVID vaccine passports,

and, you know, she knows people do the right thing because of the goodness of their heart. She got up and said this publicly to all of the media, and we have her on record with an official information act showing that they had already designed the COVID app. Like they'd already designed it. The COVID pass app was designed and yet she went to on television, on live TV to all the major media organizations and lied to the nation and said that they weren't even thinking about it. We've got her and our director of health lying. We put out a video on it and not one media source picks it up. They do not care. And so then I'm thinking, well, it seems very premeditated to me because you're lying to the public. You're not looking at

the results when they do come in. You don't seem to care about treatments that other. international countries are using very effectively, why? It just comes down. It screams to me that it is premeditated and that they do not care about the people. And whether or not they're just trying to ease the system by letting some people die, I don't know, but it is insanity. And it's not justified. Why New Zealand? Why Canada? Why these countries? Why these different spots? What makes them so ripe for the picking? I think it comes down to the connection that they all have. And for me, when I've looked into it, it's the World Economic Forum.

That's where you've had Boris Johnson, you've had the likes of Tony Abbott, Boris Johnson, Tony, both from the UK. You've had Scott Morrison, you've had just Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardun. All of these people came through the World Economic Forum as young global leaders. And they've all got similar ideas on how to handle COVID, and they've all been incredibly unsuccessful. So I just look at where they've actually gone

in the connections that they have. don't understand why Canada treats it nearly identical to New Zealand if they don't have any other ties outside of that. And the World Economic Forum seems to be the only connection that we can easily find. I mean, you've got the World Health Organization, but even their advice has been disproved time and time again. So surely as a world leader you'd look at that and go, oh, maybe they're getting this wrong. Maybe I should tailor a solution to my country. But they don't. They just keep blanketing, blanketing the statements that they use and blanketing the services that they try and enact on people. Yeah, I always bring up. So, Coeur's close Schwab, you know, he's, I don't know if he ever thought

he'd be this famous. Maybe he did. Maybe, you know, he probably wanted to be. But his book, the Great Reset, COVID-19, the Great Reset. I bought it because I was like, you know what, I want to see what this says, right? I'm not going to hear from third party on what it says. I'm going to read it. And actually, the book doesn't read out like this, you know, I don't know, this grand scheme. There are certain things he says in there. that you go, oh, I see where he's coming from. One of them is he looks at the world as a cruise ship. We're all on this together.

And I keep trying to understand, which is probably impossible to do sitting where I am. But if he believes you're on a cruise ship, his idea is if the ship's infected, if we don't work together, then the infection gets to keep going, essentially, right? It kills a lot of people. And although you save your one room, the rest of the ship is dying or burning or, you know, traveling down a horrible, horrible death. The problem is, is, although we might be like a cruise ship, I mean, Canada ain't the same damn thing as New Zealand.

New Zealand ain't the same thing as the United States to the UK to, you know, and then of course, once you get into these, you can go smaller and smaller and smaller and realize town isn't like city and city isn't like metropolis and et cetera, et cetera, except all the rules, we're going to have one rule, this is it. we're going to put it out like that. This is exactly why the concept of one world government and one world thinking doesn't work because there are cultures and there are countries that are extremely successful

and there's ones that are not successful and even the implications of COVID were vastly different country to country because they had to be. You can't treat it the same in India, which is so densely populated as you do in New Zealand and you can't do the same things that all these different countries have tried to do. It just doesn't work. And if you take that a step further and you look at this on a fiscal perspective, they keep trying to get the countries that are highly productive to keep onboarding people and bringing people in from other countries

that are very unproductive and it pulls the whole country down, rather than looking at the country that has a lot of people that are trying to leave and refugees that are really unproductive and going, what is the best solution for that country? How can we build that country up and what has pulled it down? And a prime example when people look is Africa. But actually, it was the rich, Western individuals that came into Africa and took the oil and took the gold, I think the fundamental

problem that the world has is not race-based, it's corruption. And we need more institutions that are anti-corruption. We need anti-corruption taught in schools because at the end of the day, these individuals that are given power will be greedy. They cannot help it. It's why socialism doesn't work and it's why it turns to communism because they get greedy, they can't help it. They can't give up the power once they realize that they're wrong. And so then they become dictators. That's the problem is corruption. And it's how do we stop corruption? That is a big question and a difficult one. But it needs to start with independent institutions that have got really strict regulations that they follow. And that is applied to all industry. And we aren't seeing that at the

moment. That's, I love having different conversations with different people. And one of the things I'm learning about when you go further out than your own country is we all look at different things and have different thoughts. And that's like a really beautiful thing, right? Like I listen to you and I go, how is it that our officials, our governments aren't having these conversations, but then you hit the nail on the head. Right. Once you're there, you're going to get sucked in. and you probably didn't, you know, like, you probably didn't want to do that, but now you're just, you're in this vortex of power, corruption, money going everywhere, and you get lost in it somewhere. It's kind of, kind of what I'm taking from your last couple of comments.

And honestly, that actually makes a lot of sense. It's an echo chamber. And you find the same, even when you talk to people in different institutions, right, they're in an echo chamber. They're told rules they have to stick within. They're told things they're not allowed to say. They're told conversations they're not allowed to have. And the end result is that you've got an echo chamber of people who never speak outside the box. And when they do, they're shut down. And that is the problem. And that is why freedom of speech is so important. And freedom of religion is so important. Because if people don't have individual perspectives

or aren't allowed to voice the individual perspectives, like regardless of if you think gay marriage and all these things are good or not, people should be able to discuss them, disagree. because if we don't have that, we cannot have growth. People's ideas, they cannot be in an echo chamber and then be expected to think individually. It doesn't work. And so when they get into Parliament, when they've been in there for a number of years,

and you've got all of these parliamentary staff telling you, oh, that idea is stupid and it won't work because of X, Y, Z. But when these parliamentary people aren't actually out on the ground amongst the people and really understanding what the people need, then you've just got a problem because they go back into this echo chamber and they think what's best for you rather than trying to understand what the individual needs are for the specific region. Now, I think there should be a cap on how long anyone can be in Parliament for.

And I'm talking about any MPs, the whole lot. I mean, we've got career politicians that have been in here for 30 years. I don't think they should be allowed to. I think it's you get two terms and then you're out because that way you've got this rotation of fresh ideas and you don't get out and then you get to leave on this big cushy salary for the rest of your life. Like, no, you go back into the working population and you work. because that's what we all have to do.

I don't think that it's appropriate that we send people off into these cushy areas. They then get to live out the rest of their dime, so the rest of their time on the taxpayers' money. I think it's wrong because, again, it's just inspiring more corruption, right? Why would you not want to make decisions that will keep you there for your life if you know you get to travel first class everywhere and have everything paid for? Of course you're going to try to do that because it's in your best interest. Regardless of if you're a good person or a bad person, you can't help it be drawn into it.

Yeah, well, I would say that, you know, like here, you serve two terms and you get full pension for the rest of your life. And you think, you don't even have to be a bad person to look at that and just go, man, if I can just make it to here, like, we are set. Because, like, it's not like they're making $30,000 a year. Like our politicians, as much as we say they don't make that much, actually get paid quite well, in my opinion. Do they have to work? you know, if they're a go-getter, do they work hard? Sure. But we all work hard, right? It sets up this problem of like, you're going to get people that want to go into politics. And then once they're in there, they realize, I assume I would realize, I'm going to put this on me if Sean Newman went into politics.

At some point, I'm going to go, you know, if I can just last one more term, I'm setting myself up for the next 30 years. And then you're just surviving. You're just appeasing because you don't want to rock the boat. And you think about politics, especially in the last little bit, Chantel. I'm like, I think we all just want somebody to rock the boat. I just want somebody to just come out and tell me what's going on. Just tell me what's going on. But give us all the sides so we can sit there as a population and make some of like, make some adjustments as a population ourselves.

When you just try and spoon feed us, everyone's like, this is ridiculous. This isn't comfortable anymore. Going to the serving a term, growing up above the United States, I remember as a kid thinking, man, it's really stupid a president only gets served two terms. Like, what happens if you get the greatest guy in the world or woman for that matter? And you just want them in for life. And then you get older and you go, oh, I know why you don't want that. And here in Canada, we're experiencing it, right?

Like, I couldn't agree more on capping. Like, the cap needs to be there so that you never have that problem. It's it's a roadblock. It's something there to make sure that nobody grabs power and can stay in that position for the rest of life. Because honestly, that's what's scary about you can keep getting reelected. Well, then corruption is going to come in, right? Like, I mean, what are you going to do to maintain power? Well, I don't know.

The answer is, I don't know. So that two-year term, is that for all of your MPs as well, or is that just for the prime minister? Everybody. Yeah, good. Oh, that's so good. See, we don't have that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So, no, sorry, we don't have, you can stay in for as long as you want. We're identical to you. Sorry, I, I, I misinterpreted the question. Long as you want. Oh, and there's no cap. Prime Minister as well.

Oh, see, we've got it capped on our Prime Minister, but not for the MPs. Anyone. Oh, that's fine. Yeah, wow. And I remember as a young person thinking, that's great, you know, you get somebody in there that's just great. But I, even at my age, I still don't fully understand how absolute power corrupts, absolutely. I hear that term over and over again, and you think, yeah, but if you got the right guy in there doing the right or woman, you know, like, I just want the right person. They could do a good job. Maybe you keep electing them. But then you just watch what's going on. You go, that ain't right. Like, what's going on isn't right. Like we need, like you say, movement to sprung new ideas to keep people

motivated to get in and out. And I know the U.S. in their two years or their eight years, they have problems too. Like, I mean, everybody has problems. But the fact that one person could hold power for a lifetime is about as scary as it gets. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a gradual thing. Someone probably doesn't go in there thinking, I'm going to be corrupt. I don't think so No, I don't think people are like that I think most people genuinely do want to try and do what's right

because they see themselves as a good person Most people, there are people that are not like that, but most people But I think you've got a couple of problems If someone runs for Parliament, quite often they do have narcissistic tendencies, right? To even put themselves in that position of thinking I can do this well for everyone.

Again, not all of them, but there is a lot of narcissism that happens within that sector. So then you take that and you go, Okay, if you're an MP, a sitting MP, and you're wanting to get a bill passed, and someone grabs you and they say, hey, I'll be the deciding vote for you, I'll help get your bill passed if you'll vote like this on the next one. And you're thinking, oh, well, I don't really care as much about that topic. I wasn't probably going to vote that way, but it's not such a big deal.

Okay, deal done. And the issue is, if that keeps going on and on and on and on and on and you're in there for 20, 30 years, eventually you don't have a moral compass anymore. It's so whittled down to the agreements and the deals that you can make, that it's not actually about doing what is right and what is wrong. And that's the problem that we've got. And I think it's the problem that a lot of countries have. And this comes down to why we need anti-corruption bodies, governing bodies, so much.

That's an interesting thought. Well, I want to switch to, you know, here in Canada, we had the Freedom Convoy that ended in Ottawa. In New Zealand, you guys had your, I don't know, kind of your freedom convoy. Maybe you can explain to the listener exactly what happened. You kind of read off the stop, explained a little bit about it. But I kind of wanted to hear a little bit more about it. I've definitely seen some videos from it. I think the world has seen some videos from it.

But maybe you were on the ground there for 23 days. What did you see there? I don't know, just wherever you want to go with it, Chantel. So I think a lot of the videos that went out worldwide, a lot of them were actually from the footage we took where people were dragged up naked from their hair and all. of that. So it was pretty wild seeing like little old New Zealand blow up like that because it's stuff that just does not happen. And the benefit was that because we're a tiny country, everyone saw what was actually going on because it doesn't have to get very far.

Everyone felt like, oh, I've seen that and I've seen that. You know, so it was quite exciting being able to be at the forefront of blowing something up that was so wrong. And what I'm talking about is how the police treated the people, but worse, how the government treated the people. So we did do a convoy. I don't even really know how it got started. Someone messaged me one day and they said, hey, people are wanting to do a convoy to Parliament. Can you interview us and can we chat about it? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. So New Zealand is split into two areas or two islands. So you've got the North Island up here and the South Island up here. Now our parliament is at the bottom of the North Island. So everyone that convoyed from the South had to go from the bottom all the way up and then get on ferries or boats and cross a bit of across the Cook Strait, the bit of water between Picton and Wellington, which is where our parliament is. And then everyone from the north had to obviously drive all the way down. So we had two convoys begin at the same time from opposite ends of the country.

And then they both met in the middle at Wellington. Some people crossed ferries and some people didn't have to. So the actual convoy happened really quickly and really organically. And people just like, this is happening and we're on it. and it was fascinating to watch because I hopped in the convoy in Christchurch, which is where I live, so it's halfway up the South Island. And then I convoyed with them up to Picton, and we're doing lots of live coverage. And it was so powerful seeing what really struck me was, there were thousands of cars and trucks. And it was funny because actually the government turned off the traffic cameras.

So you couldn't see how many people were actually going. They were just trying to cover up how big it actually was. Well, that's my assumption anyways. That was a that was a, that was a, a Canadian tactic as well. Oh, there we go. It's all the same, isn't it? Honestly. So they did that, which I found really interesting. So we were live streaming a lot, showing people the convoy up and down.

And I've put some of these videos, like, in groups on YouTube from like day one, I think to day eight I've released so far. Just that people can see all of them in one spot rather than each individual live. And we got up to Picton. And when we're getting near Picton, someone rang me and they said, oh,

apparently the whole convoy is stopping. in this little square in the middle of this tiny little town. And I'm looking at all these cars and trucks going, oh my goodness, this poor little town, which is mainly elderly people, like how are they going to cope? Are they going to be able to drive? Is it going to be safe for people?

So I actually ended up ringing a few different places, seeing if there was anyone that would have room for like hundreds of cars and some lovely people from a holiday park answered. And they were like, yep, we've got space. So I said, look, if anyone doesn't want to be parked illegally in the middle of the town, there's this holiday park. you pay X amount and you can go there. So lots of people went there, which was really good, I think, for that little town.

But lots of people did stay in camp, which I thought was really cool. I was, you know, just worried about facilities and things because apparently the toilets, people have been told that they weren't going to be delivering any of the Portaloos because they didn't like what the protest was about. So, yeah, whole lot of drama. And at this stage, it was really hush, hush that people were actually going to camp at Parliament. Like, I'd heard about it, but I didn't actually think people were going to be brave enough to do it, because Kiwis are so relaxed and so chill that I was kind of like, oh yeah, well, they say they're

going to, but will people actually do that, or will they just march there and that's the day done? I had no idea. I had no idea what we're in for. So we hop on the boat the next day, go across on the ferry. There's not that many freedom-based people, and I'm thinking, okay, maybe there won't be that many people actually in Wellington. But the whole North Island convoy had stopped in Wellington. Roads were like, they weren't blocked off completely, people all on one side, but there was people

everywhere and people were carrying in tents and massive big trucks were parked all around parliament like the block around parliament and people were just like nut we're here for as long as it takes and i walk in there and i start filming and i'm just thinking this might be bigger than what i realized and then everyone started flooding in and over the next couple of days it was it was pretty relaxed isn't there was just lots of music and people getting up and doing speeches every day and then it came, and that was on the Tuesday as when everyone started camping. That Thursday, the police came in

hundreds and hundreds of them, and they basically tried to remove everyone. So they started on a blockade, trying to push forward into everyone, but what they would do, so the people were all completely peaceful, they started that day actually sitting in little circles and linking arms,

and then the police would come in, they would grab someone in a headlock, and then they'd rip them away from their friends. And these were people that were sitting with their backs to the police, not doing anything singing. And then the people all stood up that were in the protest and linked arms. And then they still had their backs to the police.

They were singing the national anthem. And the police would start doing these tactics. And I was on a poll, up on a poll live streaming for about 12 hours straight, I think. And so you can see the tactics. And I was talking people through what the police were doing. They were coming in. It was like police in a line here, the people in a line here. And then the police would form another line.

And it would run in. The police at that line would separate. would grab someone in a chokehold or however they had to and drag them out and arrest them and the police line would close again. And it was really brutal. It was so brutal to watch. People were covered in blood. People had all their ribs got broken, arms got broken. People were absolutely destroyed and they were screaming, but they were just trying to stay calm. And it was just so traumatic. It was the most horrific thing I think I've seen because you've got people that are completely non-violent, completely non-violent, not trying to. Not trying to

to grab the police, not trying to attack them, nothing at all, and just being assaulted and covered in blood and being dragged away. And that day of footage is when the protest started to go viral because everyone was saying, this is so wrong. How can you treat people like this? All the protests were asking for is the mandates to be dropped or just a conversation from the Prime Minister. They just wanted someone to acknowledge the pain that these people had been through. I mean, I've got a friend Megan who's at that protest with me. She's had a break aneurysm and she's got three blood clotting disorders she's a mental health nurse they did not give her a vaccine exemption and so she's lost her job in a country that has some of the worst mental health stats around

the world it's insane and so she's there protesting her rights and now dragging people off covered in blood and saying you're not even allowed a conversation and they tried to use the excuse oh if it was if it was peaceful if they weren't if they weren't camped at parliament then we'd come out and talk with them but people had had protests in Wellington for months leading up to this and they never once came out to speak to them. So the government created this situation. The backlash from that was really thick and heavy and what it actually meant. So the police at the end of that day didn't manage to move everyone on. The people were too strong and they didn't manage to move everyone on. So at the end of the day they had to give up just for that day obviously. That was what 21 days to go.

So from that point on, the police basically had to go back and reassess what they could do to try and get rid of everyone. And in the meantime, the media were trying to create a whole lot of false stories about the protesters saying that they were throwing feces and all these things, which it turned out they had no proof of, just to try and rile up the public to dislike the protesters, because the public had come out in a flurry of support for the protesters when they saw how peaceful they were and how violent the police were to them. So what ended is a couple of weeks of every single day or most days, the police would come in and they would try to do a tactic that would rile people up. And then the media would come in, get photos of it and then try and use that to show the public how terrible the protesters were. So they used a range of tactics. The speaker of the house actually put the sprinklers on all of the protesters.

And so they were covered in water and it was making people quite sick. So we're a country of free thinkers. We've had plumbers and electricians, so they actually replumbed the system and turned off the water and got it flowing, and people dug channels through the whole of Parliament grounds to get the water flowing out of it. Then the farmers the next day brought in a whole lot of hay, so that people weren't slipping on the mud so the grass was protected. I mean, it was just hilarious to watch because every tactic they used,

the people would then push back on them. And then they would turn on, so the Speaker of the House turned on the speakers on all the protesters, so they had the Macarena, the Crazy Frog playing. They had James Blunt, Your Beautiful song playing. I mean, they just had all these songs that they thought would make people go insane. But it didn't. It didn't work. The people were actually just singing along and dancing for 12 hours straight

because I think they forgot that actually the people really, really cared about the reasons that they were staying. And Kiwis don't like to budge me. We don't like to be told no. We're pretty relaxed, but we're kind of stubborn. So the police tactics every day, they would come at a different, time. So you wouldn't know if they'd be there at 12 o'clock at night, at 4 a.m. at 6 a.m. at 4 o'clock the next day. And that combined with this music they were playing, and then they started to play

COVID ads on the speakers. Go and get your vaccination. Just real petty stuff. And so that combined with this heightened atmosphere and then always being tense and always being scared, because when the police would come in, people would link arms again, and they would say, hold the line. And so people would just hold the line peacefully and stand there to stop the police swooping in on. them. So every time this happened, again, it just meant that there's a rise in tension, a rise in emotions, and it was very full on. And so the last day came and by that last day, I was actually pretty exhausted. We'd been there for such a long time. We'd been living on sausages for like 20, 21 days, 22 days. People were 23 days, sorry, people were just shattered. And so I was

almost relieved in a way that it was over, but so sad because of what the people had been through and the hurt that I'd seen. So the final day came, the police start storming the camp at 6 a.m. They'd brought heaps and heaps of young recruits in that they'd graduated early from police college and flown in police from around the country. They had big cans of paper spray and they just started grabbing people, arresting them, throwing all of their stuff into a skip. So people woke up to police stomping on their tents early in the morning. All of their stuff got taken. The police actually ended up saying there was human waste in it. So they ended up throwing it all out, which is a complete lie. They probably found a child's nappy and used

that as an excuse to throw out everybody's property. And then they stormed down and they used different tactics throughout the day. And at one point, so I've live streamed all of this. It's pretty hectic. But halfway through the, oh, towards the end of the day, police came. forward towards a group of tents and then backed up and at the same time protesters or some people in the protest set some tents on fire and to me I thought that initially the protesters had set it on fire and then heaps of independent media were messaging me being like no no no it's not the protesters it was actually the police came and kicked over a canister in the tents and then it caught on fire and then they backed away and it looked like the protesters so I was having all

of these different conversations in my live stream because I was getting all this different information. Yeah, it was just crazy. So then the huge fire starts and then parliaments like all the grounds are on fire, people are going crazy and it just ended in this insane craziness where people are like throwing shopping trolleys at police. And to me what happened was there was a very small amount of people that looked like Antifa that came in towards the very end of that day and just started causing carnage. And so then it looked like the whole protest with violent, angry people when actually it was only a group of about 15 people that were causing the damage. And even earlier in the day, we'd have people that would run in. So everyone's holding a line peacefully. Someone would

run in and throw like an oven, like a cooktop over into the police and then run away again. So everyone on that line then gets assaulted or pushed into for someone that had nothing to do with them who's just run in and tried to cause a problem. So it was really interesting watching all of these things play out and then seeing it end in fire on that final day and just thinking, this is crazy. Like how did it end up here? And how did it take this amount of violence? And there couldn't even be a conversation from the prime minister saying, I am sorry that I have driven our country to this point, a country that has never been like this since the Springbok tour when it was all about race has not been able to play. It's just sad. It was honestly really sad. And I'm pretty much

finished, but when I was filming, I was up on this big concrete pole. It was probably, you know, a meter and a half, two meters up in the air. And at one point, a police sergeant sees us filming. Because we had our big cameras, right? Like we're just filming. We're peaceful. We're not throwing anything. We're up on a pole. So obviously we're not hurting anyone. And he grabs a fire extinguisher, turns it on us so I can't breathe. We're stuck up there. We've got this all on footage and it's we can't breathe. He did it for over a minute. Two others joined in. So at one point it was me and my partner and our friend that was bodyguarding me to make sure I stayed safe. All of us were up there for nearly a minute. I was up there for over a minute. Can't breathe. You've got fire extinguptial

over you. It's illegal. So we're being assaulted by the police. And on my live stream, people are cheering that we're being assaulted. And I'm just thinking, how did our country end up in such a sad state that people are cheering for someone being actively assaulted who's trying to bring new media just because they've made up lies and stories about what the protesters were doing. I mean, it just showed me how far our country had slid. And yeah, it was really disappointing. And I think I just feel sorry for the state of how much fear the media has put in people where that even be okay with the scenes that they watched in cheering for them, you know?

Yeah, that's a lot. That, that, uh, I don't mean, um, uh, you did a lovely job. No, I know. I was like, how do I'll say this all in a way that, you know, get through it? There's just, there's so much there. It's, it's your version of Ottawa is exactly what it is. Um, how is it changed? Like, you know, after the 23 days, how has New Zealand changed since then? Well, they dropped the mandates three weeks later. had nothing to do with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they could have. She could have dropped them the whole time and everyone could have gone home and all of that would have been spared. But the media don't spin it like that, of course, as they won't. But what I did find interesting was our police have said that they worked with Ottawa police to talk with them about what they did in Ottawa. So I think they just basically tried to replicate how Ottawa treated the people here.

Now, we can't confirm that. We've asked and done OIAs to ask for the political, like for the information that the police shared. They haven't released that to us yet. So when they do, we'll put that out because I think it would be interesting to see the communication and the similarities of tactics that the police shared. We'll have to, if you get that, you'll have to let me know because I would love to see what you guys find. That'd be very interesting to see what was shared between the two countries. Yeah, fingers crossed, they actually give it to us. But I mean, we don't know if they will, but we're going to fight for it. What's something.

you've been paying attention to now, Chantelle. You know, we're months past, not only Ottawa here, but of course, you're 23 days there. What's something you're keeping your eyes on right now? I think my big one at the moment is digital identity, because we're seeing what's happened in China. We've seen what's going on around the world. I mean, in Australia, they've actually recently started. Darwin's become a smart city where they can track you from the minute you exit your fence. it's really scary and this whole era of surveillance, I think, is one that I'm really passionate about

because especially when they're talking about AI and the influence that AI is going to have on the world and then Google brings out the fact that they, well, Google didn't bring it out, but a whistleblower sounded the alarm about their AI maybe becoming sentient. I mean, these are major concerns for people and they're not being discussed and we're being fed false information by people in institutions about the gravity of that situation. People are saying, oh, we'll never become like China. And I think they're wrong. I think they're drastically wrong.

When you look at the telecommunications channels that China are putting in the data cables that they're putting through the sea and how they're trying to buy up all these different cloud spaces around the world and try and put their systems around the world, they are trying to control telecommunications. They are looking at building in a digital, they've already built a digital currency.

They control so much of what happens here in New Zealand. they've recently got the Solomon Islands. So to me, I think digital identity and the risk of China is actually really high. And that's the biggest problem that we're facing now. And it's, again, governments overstepping their power and not communicating with the people properly on the risks. Yeah, the digital ID one scares the living shit out of me. Just, you know, I literally just read an article talking about China and the red green pass. And I'd seen different, certainly different stories about this in China and then a couple

different countries. I even want to say Israel might have implemented it at one point. But essentially, if your vaccinations aren't up to date, it goes red. If you're a protester, it goes red. And then it locks you out of like being able to get on a plane, a train, a bus. You get the point. And that's going on in China right now. And you're like, oh, man, where are we going if that's where we get to, right?

Like, that is so many steps too far. It's not even funny. And people say, I think they don't like to think of their leaders as bad people, and they don't like to know what their leaders are capable of. But the reality is if your leader is not acting in a democratic way now, and they're not caring about the human rights of all people and all citizens now, they cannot be trusted with the digital identity. It is crazy.

And especially when it's a government organization that's going to hold the digital identity and that what that leads to. And I mean, in China, they've recently started blocking the bank accounts of anyone that's attended a protest. Well, we know what we know all that about here in Canada, right? Like, I mean, that's happening here. But we've allowed Chinese people and people with ties to the United Front and the CCP into our organizations. We've sold them our farmland. We've sold them our food production. We've allowed them to be MPs in our parliament. Where do we think this is going to end up? Of course I're going to angle it for the best interest of China. And I think we're naive and stupid not to see it and not to be aware of it.

But even worse than that, I think we're culpable because I think people do know that that's where it will go. These prime ministers do know. And yet their first trips are straight overseas, straight to China. I think they're just all in bed together and they're going, you know what, this is going to happen. We're better off being on board with them as opposed to trying to fight it. I mean, America is so worried about Russia.

Why do you care what Russia is doing? You should be caring about what China is doing. No one talks about China being the number one world enemy, but they are. And they're incredibly smart. They are very, very intelligent with how they go about copying systems and how they go about manipulating them. I think it was in, I'm going to say Mumbai, China built a whole lot of their telecommunications infrastructure and the electrical infrastructure.

And Dubai came out and India said something that they CCP didn't like and they shut down the entire grid. and we're wanting to give them more power in our country, it doesn't make any logical sense unless the people in power are in bed with the Chinese. And then you're like, oh, well, of course that makes sense. Well, and the other thing about China that I've been told is they don't think in the next 10 years. They think in the next 100 years. And I can just certainly say from a Western world, we don't talk about the next 100 years.

We talk about the next 10 days if we're lucky. And certainly our government at times, that's why it seems like it plays out. Like we're not, we don't have, we don't have any vision of like where we're going. When you hear that about China, you're like, oh man, 100 years. Like, you think about that. That's, that's in it for the long game. We should all be thinking like that. And certainly some people are.

I don't feel like our governments are. And to hear China talk like that, you're like, well, that's, you know, that's a not a date. like if all the countries were doing it, so like whatever, but knowing that they aren't thinking about two years from now, they're thinking about 100 years from now, that's a long, that's playing the long game. They're manipulative and they're cunning.

And I honestly give them credit. The more I read up about China, I'm like, they're brilliant. They really are. They've gone from being very, very poor to being one of the most powerful countries in the world in a short amount of time. I think they're incredibly brilliant and incredibly strategic.

But the problem is, just as you said, the West aren't. So how do you fight against that? It's always been a fight for quality, right? We've gotten better quality products, products that can do more. But the more China is learning and the more consultants are bringing over

and putting on their payroll, the better their quality is getting. So if they've got much better quality products and they're managing to compete on a global scale and they're going to offer them at discounted rates to a lot of the third world countries, they're easily going to become the superpower of the world. It's an interesting thought.

I'm watching time. I got you for a few minutes more, and I want to do the final question. I think this has been, first off, I appreciate you coming on and giving me some of your time. But let's do the final five brought to you by crude master transport, a shout out to Heath and Tracy McDonald. If you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right, then stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing Shantel stands behind? I think it's the rights for every person to make medical decisions for their body. It's one thing that I absolutely stand behind, but I think it needs to be informed, and that's what we've not seen, and that's what I'm fighting for. And I don't care if people, whatever they want to do their body, that's up to you. But people should be allowed to make an informed decision, and that's not happening. And the same thing's going to lead to people if they end up being microchipped in digital surveillance. It's all of these issues is people not having properly informed choice. Yeah, I think that's, you know, when I asked that question, that's a not a popular, like I say popular as in it comes up more and more. The other one's freedom of speech. And then we seem to be losing both of them at the same time as as things pick up steam. Now, like I say, it's only just recently come up that unvaccinated can travel across Canada again by federal means. So planes, trains, automobiles, while not automobiles, but you get the point. And, and,

And so we'll see where this goes because it's been suspended, right? We're going to see where the next months take us. And I'm certainly hopeful that the more people I run into like yourself that are speaking openly, that are independent, that are trying to get some of the story out and try and expose some of the corruption for what it is, that we have different possibilities ahead of us than just the one path. So either way, I appreciate you coming on, Chantelle, and give me some of your time. yeah, thanks for hopping on. Thank you so much, Sean, for having me.

And yeah, I just want to say thank you to any Canadians that get to see this as well. You guys are amazing and thank you for inspiring what we did here in New Zealand.