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.
1 comment:
Imagine the uproar if Pākehā went on to a marae and disregarded/abused protocol!
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