Mayors Taskforce for Jobs
June 18, 2026
By NZB3
Spat out my popcorn before the new He-Man Masters of the Universe even started last week because of the propaganda beforehand!
Propaganda may be defined as absolutely any form of self-promotion on the part of The State. As these images (left) show, “We had cameras rolling in Greymouth capturing some of our awesome MTFJ candidates as part of a nationwide promo.” according to Mayors Taskforce For Jobs – Grey District (Facebook.)
The Ministry of Social Development had actually funded a camera crew and director to stop work at the Westland Recreation Centre (I’m assuming everyone was on the clock) back in February. Flew in from Wellington or Christchurch, I suppose, to film a 68 second clip featuring 6 people including the Mayor who had her hair done up for the occasion. Along with myself I see the video on Youtube has been viewed 6 times.
You know damn well they think they’re contributing to economic output. The MTFJ money helped Mayor Tania Gibson’s hair stylist (which is her own family business..) book another appointment. It employed ‘Serena and Megan’ to do their media production job. It purchased advertising at the local Regent Theater who must be ravenous for any such scraps. However none of these things represent productive work at all- it’s simply us paying the government money to tell us how wonderful we ought to think they are [propaganda, remember?]
That is bad but it gets worse! We are expected to believe that this Mayors Taskforce for Jobs is the great savior of these pool workers because it got them into the workforce. Rather than Seek or some wanted advert in the newspaper the MTFJ got them that job and did so by employing goodness knows how many permanent or part time staff including the oversight of the mayoralty. MTFJ paid itself to interview them, probably feed them, train them, and help prepare them for work and further interviewing. The overheads are unknown and would probably require several Official Information Act requests to eventually discover. Then, after all that, they simply sent them down the road to work at the council swimming pool!
You can imagine, can’t you, a mayor 50 years ago within 10 seconds of meeting one of these kids simply picking up the phone to the pool: “Hi Stu, it’s the Mayor. You looking for a hand down there?….Right’o I’ll send him down now.” Done. These days that process probably took weeks and consumed untold corridors of furnished office space for some desk jockey who, by virtue of their amazing contribution, thinks they have a real job too and are doing something amazing for local employment. They even pay themselves with our money to call their fellow council employee at the swimming pool to “check-in” that everything is going well. Good god, they might even meet in person and have a ratepayer funded coffee or lunch while they talk this over (all on the clock mind you) and will think that this is work!
“Exciting stuff! We have been selected to showcase in a nationwide Mayors Taskforce for Jobs video to promote the initiative. With our work for youth employment over the last 6 years in supporting over 200 young people into employment it is great to be asked to take part in showing what the Grey District can do alongside our employers and local businesses. Thank you to our young people who participated yesterday, our awesome coordinators Serena and Megan and the National MTFJ team!” – Tania Gibson for Grey District Mayor
“Launched in 2000, Mayors Taskforce for Jobs is a network of mayors that brings together councils, businesses, schools, and community organisations to tackle one of New Zealand’s most important challenges—helping young people aged 16-24 to achieve their potential.” – MTFJ ‘About Us’
The Mayor doesn’t mind this nonsense. Free central government money to have a staff of people that can be directed to pull strings. If by chance things go well the sitting mayor can take the credit and get some self-publicity that will help in the election. If it doesn’t go well then don’t talk about it. Lots of advertising which you get to splash around to grateful outlets and it all simply helps the profile of the incumbent politician with the mayor’s job. Once in a while you even get to be among the Hollywood movie trailers before an awe-struck electorate. Good for a few more social media posts. Got your finger in the pie of local employment and something to rattle on about (the kids, I’m helping the kids!) if the topic comes up in a speech. “Big Day,” “Showcasing what’s possible when community backs our young people” she says.
The new staff of the Rec center don’t mind either. They have a paycheck now and some false self-esteem because they think it’s a real job. Isn’t. Government swimming pools are all losing money because there isn’t enough local demand. They are all bleeding money. A welfare program with warm water and chlorine. The dribs and drabs of people who buy the subsidised entry tickets are not contributing enough to pay for the wages or the operational expenditure they are consuming. The ‘business’ is not market-facing or economically viable in the least. Simply a drain on the taxpayer/ratepayer in order to give a ‘job’ to a few whistle-blowers in togs and their back-room pencil pushers for the glory of the politicians.
MTFJ pays wage subsidies to occupations which, by definition, are not real jobs in the sense that they would exist by paying their own way. A work-for-the-dole scheme. If that’s going on at the pool then this is also a great way to buy the silence of everyone lining their pockets with it because it makes their fantasy world go around.
Licensing & Training, Workplace Equipment. If Pool Boss Harry here (in black, image left) creates some requirements for equipment then the government will pay the Rec center for them. Massive incentive here to require stationary, shirts, shoes, togs, towels, whistles, etc. so that the government will pay you for them. Schools have been doing it for generations now as a nice side-earner so it’s an old trick and long-accepted bit of corruption.
Yeah, if Harry can devise a training program involving health and safety and swimming and rescuing etc. then MTFJ will pay him to conduct it. So you better believe he is coming up with all sorts of hoops for the kids to jump through like trained seals. He’s probably being trained himself at our expense to get the skills to bring home and train other people. I bet they fly him to Christchurch or something once in a while to learn new tricks. I suspect much of the operating budget for keeping the place going relies and depends upon the funding attached to “training” or else the budget spreadsheet would go off the deep end!
We could really find out with an OIA (followed by another OIA or two repeating the question) how much all this smoke and mirrors is costing us. How much is it costing people with real jobs, productive jobs, to sponsor these people in their fake jobs? And to trick them all into thinking they are needed and wanted and employed. The girl in the picture says she never set out to be a lifeguard and wasn’t much good at swimming. The State has diverted her into an employment pathway based on false incentives since, I guess, it needs fresh bodies for this big sham and couldn’t even find somebody who liked pools.
Now take this particular leading example and consider what else this MTFJ branch is up to multiplied by the 36 such entities nationwide. The propaganda, the paychecks, the illusion of employment, the illusionary market for equipment and training. The destruction of jobs or firms that might have existed if they didn’t have to compete with the “winners” selected for and subsidised by The State? The contrived standards that are being set by people who are not tracking necessity or market demand but how much more government revenue they can pull on by adding it to their ‘workload’. These standards then become ‘norms’ that ACTUAL market-facing firms need to meet too though they will know they’re make-work nonsense and wonder how they got into their workflow. When they run out of ‘health and safety’ crap to pay themselves for they found a lucrative vein in paying themselves to be “culturally aware” because that’s a ‘job’ for someone too and sponsored payroll that our accountant says will keep the ‘business’ from going under. Yet by patronising all this fluff it only grows more Woke and ridiculous all the time! The hospitals, in particular, are rife with it.
My gods! How do they get away with it? Well, everyone inside is paid off for a start. And it’s not like the “Public Interest Journalism Fund” is going to expose all this because they too are part of all this.
OK but why don’t the public cry out? “The Emperor has no clothes!” says an outraged ratepayer group (back in the day when we had those.) Ah, but they’ll be told it’s Central Government money for our community not local rates so what’s your problem?
How about I write a letter to the editor? Or inform the council? Or ask the newspaper to publish this article? Can’t let you do that, Rick. Besides, 36 MTFJ cells exist all around New Zealand all slurping at that Wellington money so why shouldn’t we get ours too?
Still, you would like to think common sense and a heuristic inkling of economics would make the regular folk on the street (who are being pillaged for this) wish to put a stop to it. They know it’s mad under all that cognitive dissonance don’t they? Ah- but then we get to the main magical ingredient that ensures this scam will never end. It’s our own modern version of sending away youth to the Minotaur’s maze to die for the tribe. To be ‘hero impostors’ to us all but really chewed up and slaughtered by the monster in the maze to keep these ‘treasured’ institutions working. So the mayor can get her hair cut, so Harry can flog some whistles, so the hydro slides can keep running….The Athenian hero Theseus and generations of youth before him had to be sent to die in this maze.
Too abstract? I’ll back it up a bit. I’m saying young people are the essential fuel this system runs on. It needs to consume them, use them, work through them. They are the essential cover. If anyone says what I am saying here the reply will be “oh how could you be so mean to those kids?” Aren’t their fake jobs and false sense of worth so wonderful that we should pay whatever it takes? They’re so brave going on government social media like that and you’re going to be cruel to them? How could you? Be nice. Be kind!
Yes, anyone who questions, let alone attacks, this corrupt system will immediately be accused of undermining these photogenic local kids who are the public-facing but marginal beneficiaries of all this secret skulduggery. If I said an inch of what I’ve written above on the Mayor’s or the Mayors Taskforce For Jobs social media they would delete the comment and ban me. Might not have to because so many Statist hangers on would swarm to defend the prison system. Everyone knows not to say these things in public or print or even on their own private page. They know how they will be received. They know it will exile them from public life in this culture where we send our youth off to sacrifice for the ‘greater good’. So, nobody speaks.
Ask yourself why the MTFJ needed to hire these 2 new young people for the local pool. What happened to to last 2 young people they hired? It’s not as if the Rec Center is expanding so the previous iteration of Theseus and Princess Ariadne of Crete must have aged out of the program just as the pair before them and the pair before that.
Young People are required to be exploited and on display as a shield for all of this mad machinery. And there they are. And there the MTFJ is sending Serena and Megan in to make sure those faces are where we can see them. In this case, Tania Gibson is dolled up to play the role of King Minos of Crete sending youths off as tribute so that her kingdom of fabrication and false-economy can keep on trucking on.
The story ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’ is part of our culture because we are supposed to break these corrupt cycles not repeat them. Putting an end to it is civilisation and makes for a heroic story. Repeating it over and over is not a good story- it is barbaric and decayed. Exploitative. But you sure can see how people fall into it and why they have such spite for any Theseus who aspires to break the wheel. “Not I. some child born in a marvellous year, will learn the trick of standing upright here.” as Curnow put it. Well maybe that’s why that poem is forgotten and we don’t learn Classics in government schools?
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