Anthony Willy: Love’s Labour’s Lost (with apologies to the Bard)

The NZCPR has over the term of the last government extensively documented the mischief and incompetence that marked its passage and now its passing. The unprecedented attack on our institutions has been exposed for what we now see it to be; a naked attempt to destabilise our society and its institutions and supplant them with the trappings of an authoritarian state fashioned around the aspirations of a tiny minority of those claiming Maori entitlement. 

At the time of Labour’s  demise, the project was well advanced. Our common language so essential to social harmony and progress has been steadily undermined by the insertion of meaningless words and phrases which can have no roots in the language as spoken by tribal Maoris in 1840 for the simple reason that the concepts now attached to the words did not then exist. The agreement entered into between the Crown and initially a few Chiefs at Waitangi and later enthusiastically adopted by most tribes once the benefits of an end to; poverty, internecine bloodshed and cannibalism became clear. A document which rested for over a hundred years as little more than an interesting historical artifact on the road to a modern state able to hold its head up in the world has been resurrected and assigned a meaning and importance which on the most superficial examination is fraudulent, and which is under the Ardern government was used as a vehicle for disestablishing our democratic institutions. This process was supplemented by the reordering of our health system something of crucial importance to most people. In place of a health service that was, without doubt based on need, the Ardern government introduced a tribal element ostensibly based on adverse Maori health statistics the remedying of which were to a  large extent in the hands of the suffers. This unsurprisingly resulted in resentment and division. Added to this was the master stroke of adopting the Chinese response to the Covid virus. This sanctioned the government locking people up in their homes, the wearing of face masks and the cynical requirement that if you were not “vaccinated” then you would lose your job. This was felt keenly in the health services where because of their training and experience some employees  considered that the “vaccinations” were a dangerous  imposition for some which did little to protect the public. A view now emerging from the overseas inquests into the covid responses around the world. Because citizens could not be left to starve, they were bizarrely allowed to shop at crowded supermarkets (vaccinated or not), but not other food outlets. Recognising that the economy could not be allowed to collapse overnight vast sums of taxpayer’s money was dispensed to business owners the consequences of which will only become clear when the books are opened later this month. Lord Sumption a recently retired distinguished member of the United Kingdom Supreme Court pointed out the folly and the enduring consequences of this unnecessary and draconian attack on our ancient freedoms, and our children’s futures  to a nasty virus which like others of its kind will cause the some deaths but nothing like the hysterical predictions which were made around the world. But and numbers of internationally renowned medical experts was ignored.

Education, so important to the success of our society became a casualty. Syllabuses were infected with plainly meaningless concepts such as Maori science and the like. Idiotic claims about the discovery of Antarctica were greeted with wise head nodding from the Royal Society no less. Full time school attendance diminished to the point that in some localities it fell below 50%. Crime rates among the young, and in some cases the very young, soared resulting in businesses closing and some shopping precincts becoming deserted. Labour was oblivious to the need for the syllabus to ensure that students learned where they had come from (history) where they are on the planet (geography) and mathematics and the real sciences which are necessary for our survival on the planet.

The Rule of Law  has been subverted by introducing Maori customs into the Common Law which have long since ceased to have any meaning in our modern society. Judges are rewriting legislation because to apply the plain wording would be unfair to the Maori applicants for seabed and foreshore privileges. And so, it goes.

Three more years of this Marxist agenda (or was it merely a case of a number of unforeseen consequences) would have resulted in a country which few of us would have recognised or would want to live in. But amid all of this well documented devastation which the incoming government has promised to rectify and return our country to what it was six years ago is another casualty which appears to have been lost on its perpetrators. That is the destruction of the New Zealand Labour Party as a viable political entity. It is worth spilling some ink on this.

The New Zealand Labour Party pre- 2017.

A market economy can be brutal to those who have only their labour to sell. Working in a coal mine and dying young of lung disease leaves the wage worker with only one option. They secure a living wage or go under and not only they but the whole society and economy suffers. The necessity of giving dignity to manual labour was recognised early in New Zealand. It was in 1840 that Samuel Parnell, a carpenter raised the flag and insisted on working no more than an 8-hour day. Similar protests were made by the coal miners at Runanga in the 1880s and after experimenting with and rejecting a Socialists Party, the New Zealand Labour Party came into being in 1916. It separated from the Liberal Party and won its first Parliamentary seat in 1919. It is in fact New Zealand’s oldest political Party. It came into its own during the great depression of the 1930s and in the 1935 General Election achieved 46% of the vote and 53 of the 80 seats in Parliament (shades of 2020.) Labour comprised of mostly Trade Union members and a few, very few academics or people of “means” promised and delivered on social and economic reform but it achieved this within the bounds of the market economy by adopting the mixed public private economy espoused by Maynard Keynes. So successful was its appeal to the public that it swept to power at the next election under Michael Joseph Savage with 56% of the votes. It used its time in office well by introducing the public health system and social security measures which we now take for granted. This years before the 1945 Atlee Labour government in the United Kingdom introduced similar measures. Throughout its early terms in office, although it did pursue a policy of nationalising some key institutions such as the Bank of New Zealand and a number of industries it eschewed its early socialist roots. This was not a Party guided by Marxist principles. To the contrary it had its roots in the working- class trade union movements something which the Marxists dictator Lenin hated above all else.

This provenance continued down to 2017. Successive Labour governments in more recent times under Walter Nash, Norman Kirk, Bill Rowling  David Lange and Helen Clarke stayed true to their roots and provided a viable alternative to those electors who for whatever reason disliked aspects of National Party policies or just thought it was time to give the other jokers a turn, and that became the norm for New Zealand politics. The crucial ingredient of all of these governments was that the cabinet rooms were occupied by adults who had experienced a life outside of politics, and they bought those past experiences to the problems and needs of the day. People such as Michael Joseph Savage, David Lange, Roger Douglas, Trevor De Cleene, Michael Bassett, Richard Prebble, Annette King, Michael Cullen, Margaret Wilson, Mabel Howard, and Helen Clarke to name but a few brought to their work not only a particular slant on policy which did not appeal to everybody but rational thought and a maturity of outlook. Similarly, within their own sphere of representing Maori seats  the outstanding contributions of Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck. 

There was never any question that such people would be seduced by bandwagon politics such as the obsession with a delusional interpretation of the meaning and effect of the document signed in 1840, and the confection of a language which attempts to apply a pre -1840had  lexicon which existed to describe the way of life and regulation of social necessities existing at the time to concepts and practices which govern our lives in the twenty first century. It was David Lange who said publicly that the Waitangi document meant nothing to him. It was merely an historical artifact in the life of the development of our modern nation.

The Labour Party post 2017.

All of this changed with the appearance of Ardern on the Labour Party stage. Somebody who was allocated a list seat while serving as world President of a Communist “youth” movement, and before that had worked in the office of the British Prime Minister for a while. She has a qualification in “communication” but no known experience of life outside of politics. What she did have though was an alien and predetermined view of how our society should be ordered. In 2017 she became the leader of the Labour Party and lost the election of that year to National but was gifted the Prime Ministership and the government by Winston Peters. Of the cabinet very few apart from David Parker and Andrew Little had much experience of the world outside of politics and the situation deteriorated further post 2020. Throughout the term of that administration the public were treated to a musical chairs of changing ministers and in 2023 the Prime Minister joined the dance and the best the Party had to offer as leader was Christopher Hipkins a 45-year-old with a degree in politics. A decent hard- working chap and probably close in his upbringing to the tenets of the founding party but with no life experience outside of politics. Under his leadership the erosion of the party and all that it had once stood for gathered pace. He continued Arderns work, seemingly reluctantly at times of undermining our democracy by encouraging Maori constitutional and monetary expectations beyond anything which the public would tolerate and stood by while our economy,  health, education and legal systems deteriorated. No longer was it a party which existed to fight for the rights of those who work and contribute to society and the economy. Instead, it became the party of handouts and entitlement. The “adults” had long since left the cabinet room and looking at Hipkins televised lineup of Ministers in waiting it is clear the cupboard is bare. This is evident from the tantrums and “look at me” antics of the Labour Members at the swearing in of Parliament. Most of the young women on the back benches whether having the appearance of any Maori blood lines or in some cases clearly none insisted on taking the oath of allegiance to King Charles the Third in a language which one can only assume was Maori. This grandstanding was exceeded only by the Mere waving and shouting of members of the Maori Party. The public of all shades of political persuasion are tired of these childish antics and dealt the Party a mortal blow at the election. It now faces the task of rediscovering its roots, which given the present personnel raises the question do they even know what those roots are and if so do they care enough about them or will they continue with their semi educated single issue obsessions? It is no coincidence that some of the best and most experienced minds in the Party could see the early signs of decay, exacerbated by the Muldoon years, and in 1993 left the Labour Party and together with the National MP Derek Quigley formed the ACT Party. To our good fortune ACT will now face its greatest challenge of helping to put the past six years behind us.

Without question any “Love for Labour is lost.”

Anthony Willy is a Barrister and Solicitor, who served as a Judge on four Courts: District, Environment, Tax and Valuation. He is a former Lecturer in Law at Canterbury University. He presently acts as an Arbitrator, a Commercial mediator, a Resource Management Act Commissioner, and is a Director of several companies.