Ideology booby trap sank Party pledged to reality and Ordinary People scribe tells influencers
Winston Peters and his NZ First Party evaporated in the general election simply because he departed from the teachings of his guiding light, the late National Party prime minister Sir Rob Muldoon.
It was Muldoon who inculcated Peters with the principle of avoiding entanglement with any exotic ideology or doctrine and to always put the practical needs of New Zealand first, National Press Club president Peter Isaac told the Wanganui Club.
In the event Mr Peters and his party had become inexorably enmeshed in climate doctrine and this perceived entanglement only intensified as Mr Peters had sought to minimise the association by taking a bet each way, Isaac in the immediate aftermath of the general election told Wanganui Club members.
NZ First’s compromising with the all-embracing climate ideology of the other two coalition partners now became progressively more visible.
It took the form of triangulation, hedging, and meant that NZ First became reluctantly yet utterly and unwittingly mired in the ideology, notably as champion of the “billion trees” planting campaign.
The tree planting scheme was designed to appease NZ First’s Green and Labour coalition partners and at the same time demonstrate to the productive sector that NZ First was still behind them.
In the event the productive sector saw it as NZ First acquiescing in a Green ploy to gobble up grazing land in order to eliminate cattle and sheep.
Warnings later on from Mr Peters’ right hand man and now ex Northland MP Shane Jones that resurgent Greens meant a “tsunami from hell” for farmers only accentuated the question about what Mr Peters and his party were doing in harness with the Greens in the first place.
Coalition sponsored globalist-inspired showboating such as territorial local governments proclaiming “Climate Emergencies” further dismayed NZ First’s base as being an exhibition of voguish, frivolous irresponsibility.
A few months after this public posturing the true “extinction” threat the Covid -19 virus swept in from China.
It was unforeseen “and nobody wants to talk about this” by the very global agencies before which the coalition government demonstrably prostrated itself.
In addition to this obeisance the coalition disbursed immense levies in order to receive real, actual emergency alerts instead of fanciful self-serving ideological ones.
Mr Peters at the start had believed that he could weave his way around the booby trap presented by the climatic ideology without actually becoming identified, smeared with it.
He misunderstood the way in which climate was viewed by the Labour Party as a unifying doctrine, and one to be given the maximum emphasis at every opportunity, notably by the coalition’s deputy prime minister – Mr Peters himself.
This was especially so in Mr Peter’s additional portfolio of foreign minister in which he found himself obliged to emphasise and even give priority to the climate ideology in all his dealings with foreign governments about anything at all.
Rob Muldoon had warned the young Mr Peters at his political career outset to avoid abstract foreign doctrines and to concentrate only on what was good for New Zealanders, hence NZ “First.”
Mr Peters’ role as the hero of the nation’s wealth earning sector and thus the older sector of the population that created and sustained it was damaged from the inception of the Labour-led coalition by the abrupt ideological ban on oil and gas exploration.
Isaac went on to describe Rob Muldoon as a green-compatible politician and one dedicated in policy terms to bio diversity.
His negotiation of the Clyde dam had made New Zealand 80 percent power renewable. Muldoon’s support of the wine industry had put it on the global map. He was responsible for the Kiwifruit Licensing Authority and consistently shoved horticulture to the forefront. He was a fellow of the Royal Institute of Horticulture.
Isaac said that the departure of NZ First from Parliament with its vote ranking with that of start-up parties marked the extinction of Rob’s Mob as the Muldoon faithful were known.
He sheeted home the collapse of the NZ First vote to the attempt to blend reality with ideology and the mixed messages that this formula generated, especially the one to the effect that the party of everyday people had abandoned them in favour of the cultural elites.
“While you might not have agreed with what Rob was saying, you were in no doubt what he was saying,” concluded Isaac.
See also:- https://www.nationalpressclub.org.nz
Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull’s true belief in Opposition policies haunts Australian politics
The Turnbull Test is designed to show the degree to which a political party leader has their heart in their own party. Or in the other side’s. It is named after Australian Liberal Party leader and federal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
He consistently demonstrated that far from being a conservative his leanings were anything but conservative and that in fact that his heart was very much with the Opposition in the form of the Australian Labour Party and the Green Party.
Mr Turnbull’s inability to disguise his preference for leftist causes notably republicanism and climatism continues to haunt the Liberals.
National Press Club NZ president Peter Isaac now analyses the New Zealand party leaders against the Turnbull Test and does so as the New Zealanders tool up for their imminent general election. Do they really believe in their own party? Really?
Let’s look at them:-
- Jacinda Ardern Labour Leader and Prime Minister. Turnbull Test score: 100 percent. Her obvious delight in identitarian politics and the whole United Nations line singles her out as a true socialist looking for underdogs with which to empathise. Her motto is “Be Kind,” and she means it.
Judith Collins Leader of the Opposition and the National Party: 100 percent. She is the governess of Parliament, impatient with mawkish sentimentality, and demonstrably stern with those she views as indulging in it.
- Winston Peters Leader of the New Zealand First Party and deputy Prime Minister: 60 percent. Once a stalwart of the National party he broke away to form his own party. He is at heart what is known in the United States as a Prairie Populist. He is non doctrinal and will dip into other party’s policies as he did with his off-peak travel and discount Gold Card scheme for pensioners.
- James Shaw co- Leader of the Green Party: 65 percent. His buttoned down look continues to betray the corporate financial figure he once was. This in a coalition party whose members often give the aspect of having strolled out of a rock concert. The Green Party heavying of the rest of the Labour-led coalition cabinet in diverting money to a no-no private school, even a Green one, indicates a doctrinal fissure.
- David Seymour Leader of the ACT Party: 110 percent. The leader of this one-seat Parliamentary Party is in a de-facto voting arrangement with National. Mr Seymour has come into prominence through his right-to-die legislation which is subject to an integrated referendum at the general election. Mr Seymour’s upper lip curls in contempt at the mere contemplation of the United Nations omnibus agenda which plays such a large part in the ruling Labour-led coalition doxology.
The Turnbull Test reveals that for the most part the New Zealand political leaders sidestep the perils of the syndrome in which leaders find their sympathies lying in fact with their opponents instead of with their own parties.
Even so, and with the New Zealand leadership emerging convincingly from the Turnbull Test, we find a selection of intriguing ironies and contradictions, some of them centred on the Labour Party’s imperative to inhabit the moral high ground.
Bizarrely New Zealand’s heart-string pulling Labour Party must suppress the ardours of its most activist devotees who are prone in their zeal to tossing their second vote, the party one, to the Greens.
Neither does Labour want to have to forge together another coalition with the Greens, dedicated as the Greens are to the aspirations of an elite constituency that is light years removed politically from Labour’s own face-value worker base.
Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party must somehow deter the Labour Party’s ultra activist devotees from tossing this second vote, their ideological vote, once described as the conscience vote, to the Green Party.
This second vote is a huge bloc and includes for example those involved in education at any level and a large slice of professionals including quasi professions such as the media.
This elites vote as it is often described is earmarked for the Greens in the justified belief that the Greens will enforce a hard left agenda while Labour of necessity must implement bread and butter policies if only to keep the economy going in order to keep Labour in power.
Skilfully, the Greens use their influence with the mainstream media to take both sides of their load-bearing climate policy plank. Thus, if there are floods it is due to “carbon” as they describe carbon dioxide. If there is a drought, then it too is due to “carbon.”
The New Zealand proportional representation system is based on the German one. There are two votes. One for a candidate. One for a Party.
Our test indicates the absence in New Zealand party politics of a Malcolm Turnbull whose stewardship of the Australian Liberal i.e. conservative party was conducted while in his breast beat the progressivist heart of a university social sciences undergraduate.
Holier-than-thou ploy triggers unintended consequences
A review of bullying and harassment within Parliament instigated by the Speakers Office which is responsible for who are entitled to work in Parliament and for what they do there has involved this same office in obloquy and sensationalism.
The release of the report was accompanied by dire portents from the Speakers Office conjuring up images of at least one rapist stalking Parliament’s carpeted corridors and this sinister figure accompanied by a cohort of like-minded individuals in the sex pest category.
In the event once the hue and cry settled down this somewhat spooky scenario devolved onto three incidents involving the same people and which had been subjected to historical procedural investigations.
Even so, in the accompanying atmosphere one Parliamentary staffer, male, was “stood down” under the cloud of the word rapist.
Another unexpected blow-back was the public accusation by a former department head, female, that they had been on the receiving end of foul language from the instigator of this same review.
The office of the Speaker is supposed to be the tranquil and unquestioned hub of the opposing forces of parliamentary democracy.
Another role, unspoken, is that this same office detects trouble and nips it in the bud before it sees the light of day.
In this instance the opposite happened.
This same office instigated an official review into a topic known to be of such volatility that whatever the result it was bound to detonate in the public domain.
What went wrong?
A generation ago New Zealand began emerging from its cult of exaggerated masculinity.
Pubs and clubs until very recently were gender segregated and few saw anything unusual in this.
Change, held back, now surged into an opposing extreme in which male characteristics instead of being viewed as admirable became viewed as toxic.
The intellectual class, political class, supposed to act as a pathfinder in this kind of sea-change instead seized upon it to trumpet its own value and did so by exaggerating this shift and in doing so further distorted it.
The churches similarly arbiters, if not shepherds, in this kind of sudden societal shift stood aside.
Both protestant and catholic churches in New Zealand traditionally enjoyed rather more influence than in other British outposts just because of the nation’s remoteness.
They now failed to put a brake on the mounting panic just because the churches themselves no longer had any moral suasion.
The need for Parliament to seek out any dirty laundry and then wash it in public emphasises the extent to which these new and untrammelled forces trigger this kind of high profile self-abasement, aka transparency.
There is another explanation, a rather more worldly one.
Westminster parliaments were never designed for proportional representation.
The German version, the one imposed on New Zealand, was designed to ensure enough opposing forces to eliminate one single outcome---the emergence of a dictator, a tyrant.
There remains therefore the unasked question, the taboo question.
It is centred on which of the opposing forces in New Zealand’s coalition government insisted on an inquiry which beyond its purgative value could only have been a public embarrassment lowering still further in the public esteem Parliament, and specifically the office of the Speaker
28 Nov: 1321 | If the Tax Working Group recommends an inheritance tax in all-but-name, the Government should declare it dead-on-arrival, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union in response to comments made by Sir Michael Cullen in Wellington today.
24 Oct: 0823 |New Zealand and Japan are working together to transition away from a reliance on fossil fuels with the signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation on hydrogen, says Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods.
The Green Party will propose an amendment to the Crown Minerals Act Amendment Bill to close a current loophole that allows for oil and gas companies to extend their permits for offshore drilling.
The Green Party welcome the introduction of the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, which will legislate to officially stop new offshore oil and gas exploration permits.
The Green Party have welcomed the Government’s decision to increase the refugee quota to 1500 annually, meaning more families, women and children fleeing war and persecution will have a safe place to call home.
The New Zealand Initiative has released a report slamming the Government's spending as inefficient and wasteful, but there’s more to the numbers than meets the eye, Thomas Coughlan reports for Newsroom..
Sir Geoffrey Palmer_Please credit Victoria University of WellingtonFormer Prime Minister the Right Honourable Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC used the 2018 Sir Owen Woodhouse Memorial Lecture at Victoria University of Wellington this evening (Monday 10 September) to call for a bold and visionary overhaul of New Zealand’s accident compensation system.
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242