Commentator Bryce Edwards’ assertion that there is a clear left-right divide over the Crafar farms sale is quite wrong. Right across the political spectrum New Zealanders are overwhelmingly against the sell-out of our land to Chinese investors. And no, it is not xenophobia or racism. Nor is it the same as dealing with any other foreign investor. Only commentators ignorant of the lessons of history and of what may ominously loom ahead could claim anything so naïve. Dealing with extraordinarily wealthy individuals and companies backed, and even financed by a Communist Chinese Government seeking to gain a foothold in a very desirable country is another issue entirely.

The Prime Minister’s “understanding” too, that less than 1% of New Zealand land is owned by foreigners, was not able to be verified by the Overseas Investment Office, claiming that too many variables are involved for it to be able to confirm his claim.

 Stupid is as stupid does. For the Nelson Mail to claim there is no reason to block the Crafar farms deal – “Where is the  fuss?” shows a breathtaking degree of ignorance. For the Dominion Post columnist Richard Long to call those who object – “politically and economically blinkered shriekers” –  is an arrogant dismissal of most of the rest of the country who disagree with him – many obviously far more aware of the potential dangers of this honey trap. A genuine democracy requires government with the consent of the majority of the country. Long apparently has little respect for their views on this crucial issue.

Tracy Watkins’ political analysis shows more caution, though she, too, has failed to investigate what may be an increasingly important issue – where do John Key’s loyalties really lie?  This is a Prime Minister who has overruled the wishes of so many New Zealanders in areas that count, and is determined, as with asset sales, for example,  to continue doing so. A considerable majority in this country is well and truly, for very good reason, against Key’s determination to proceed with selling off our assets. Once gone, they are gone. And the consequences are obvious.

A strong majority has also been against several other crucial issues which have steered us in damaging directions during the term of the recent National government. What has happened to us as a people that what the National Party leader decides against the wishes of the majority, is now regularly imposed on us?

In his usual overruling fashion, Key says that the sale of the Crafar farms  “well and truly exceeded” all the conditions they had to meet under the law. These are not the words of a man reluctant to see New Zealand land pass into dubious and very possibly dangerous foreign hands. Because, of course,  we would be utterly naive to assume for a moment that Pengxin are not watched, if not manipulated by that same  tyrannical Communist Chinese Government which so regularly turns upon its own people, if they dare to protest against its high-handed actions.

Nor can even one Hong Kong-fronted “private” Chinese investment firm operate without the consent  – ( if not the active involvement – possibly including the financial interest ) of the Chinese Communist Party, which,  like any autocratic government,  could appropriate its assets at will, under any suitable pretext. In this case the result could be that the Communist Chinese government would then own New Zealand farmland.

How ignorant really, is John Key, of this possibility? And if our present Prime Minister well knows this – and of the  Chinese government’s  very active inroads into the Pacific area,  its search for bases and its very keen interest in Antarctica, should be we asking  if he has another agenda – which is not that of the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders? Is it possible that he regards his temporary prime ministership as basically a stepping stone on the way to his next career move?

For there is no doubt that Jonathan Coleman and Maurice Williamson would not have been the ones who gave the final approval to the Pengxin sale. Key dominates and controls all the decision-making of the National Party – and the implications of this should concern us. What we now know about National Party MPs,  from their  lamentable record in this last Parliamentary term,  is that none of them are willing to make a stand on principle when they do not believe that a proposed policy  is right –  and that no minister would undertake such a decision, with its worrying implications, without John Key deciding for him or her.

However, the corruption of politics of principle sounds the death knell for any democracy. The result is inevitably the moral bankruptcy of any government that operates without these. And the foremost principle of democracy is that the government must genuinely represent its people -  a principle for which the enigmatic John Key apparently doesn’t give a fig.

Where was the consent of the people when 85% of New Zealanders said no to the attack on families underpinning the infamous anti-smacking legislation? Too bad, said Key, in essence. What I say goes.

The question why…why has this obviously egoistical  and determined individual’s possible long-term agenda never been properly questioned…should be asked of a largely supine media. Why did the incoming Prime Minister so very readily endorse that damaging, demonstrably anti-democratic decision by an outgoing leftwing Prime Minister who already, during her tenure, exhibited the same determination to have her way – no matter the damage to the country?

Moreover, if John Key is allowed to keep riding roughshod over New Zealand, we are going to lose more and more of our country. He maintains, in relation to the Crafar farms sale that “the government  could change the law if he felt”  (notice that he…)  that “ an unacceptable amount of farmland was being sold to foreign buyers, but he did not feel that was the case.”

 No matter what viewpoint one might have with regard to flogging off our assets,  so that the annual revenue from these  will no longer flow into our coffers, for the benefit of all New Zealanders,  it should by now have struck any media analyst worth the role that for this undoubtedly opinionated individual to claim that such vital decisions are for him alone – and not for the people of New Zealand as a whole –  should be eliciting a national protest.

A hugely important question needs to be resolved. Are we in fact dealing with someone of overweening ambition, obviously under-educated  - (his embarrassingly poor diction rather a giveaway) – and, particularly,  historically and philosophically – where  it matters far more? What ambition drives an individual deciding even in his youth that he wanted to be Prime Minister? With seemingly no discernible talent from his school record to back this up, Key has instead a gift for self-promotion – and that personal charisma which makes him expert at a folksy, manipulative self-deprecation…plus that smarm-and-charm which female reporters in particular respond to. And yet, that phrase, bestowed by colleagues… “the smiling assassin”?

Contrary to the Prime Minister’s claim – no, we don’t “have  pretty tight conditions on sales in this country”. The OIO,  possibly constrained by inadequate terms of reference, has reportedly rubberstamped nearly every application in recent years, including to wealthy foreign buyers promising  whatever it takes to get their  application accepted, and subsequently walking away from their  undertakings – these apparently not followed up. Such sales have no genuine benefit to us, nor to our children long-term.

Moreover, à propos of Key’s statement that it is not for the government to say that a liquidator should accept a lower price by selling to a New Zealander – then it is time for the debate about whether it should  - if our government truly represents New Zealanders, their best interests and their own decision-making  – the very essence of a democracy, which we demonstrably no longer have.

It is being claimed that Shanghai Pengxin does not even meet the criteria for overseas investment in New Zealand. The Crafar Farms Purchase Group points out that it does not have experience in dairying, “which is why they (sic) are trying to use the New Zealand Government’s own SOE, Landcorp, to put the veneer of a Kiwi face on this deal. The fact that Shanghai Pengxin does not have this dairy farming  experience makes them nothing more than a passive investor…”

It is not that New Zealanders  now stand at risk of being priced off their own land. It is well past that: it is already happening. How does any farmer compete against overseas billionaires with a determination to outbid them to pick off our best assets and iconic places? John Key’s stated concern that when he goes to the very many Chinese functions that he is invited to as Prime Minister “ he is not keen on them feeling they are not welcome in New Zealand” – is not only a facile challenge he has levelled at Opposition Leader David Shearer, but highly inadequate as a motive for failing to scrutinise the implications of these land sales.

Is this part of his reluctance to tell the Communist Chinese Government  (so very recently torturing and butchering citizens in Tibet who will not observe the Chinese New Year holiday this murderous regime is trying to inflict on them) that it is not welcome to take up ownership of New Zealand land…because that is possibly what we may be faced with in the future.

What is the crux of this matter – and what are the important questions to be asked?

First, regardless of Key’s overconfident assertions, New Zealanders at large don’t doubt that the world is watching what is happening. More and more Chinese (and other wealthy foreign) interest is being drawn be to this country, and the applications to buy up New Zealand territory will be turning from a trickle to a flood.

When the Hong Kong Chinese bought into Vancouver, after the hand-over of their island to mainland Communist China, the people of Vancouver were very soon priced out of their prime waterfront homes, views, and even streets – now given Chinese names.

There is no reason what ever to think that we are not facing the same. So why then  aren’t  we learning the lessons of history? Again, how much history does the former wheeler-dealer Key even know? Reportedly, Owen Glenn was recently anxious to warn our insouciant Prime Minister of China’s move into the Pacific, and the too-convenient loans being offered to Pacific Island governments.  The Americans have shown increasing concern, and the fact that China has long had its eye on the Antarctic, where it has no territorial presence, should also perturb us.

Knowledgeable historians – (and Chinese residents who formerly fled this oppressive regime to emigrate to New Zealand and who are well aware of the realities facing us) are perturbed at our government’s seeming lack of concern about these issues – or rather the Prime Minister’s lack of concern:  evidently the Prime Minister is now virtually the government. 

• What if this prime dairy farming land does pass into the control of Communist China  - which will then own a foothold in New Zealand?
• Should we be concerned about the gradual virtual commercial  colonisation of New Zealand by Chinese interests in particular?
• Why are New Zealanders not being the ones to decide these issues?

What is now concerning many New Zealanders is what qualifications John Key has to support his determination to override New Zealanders on matters of national interest?

Given his previous job as, basically as a money shifter, internationally – betting on trading currency –  his past experience consists of risk-taking, of gambling. But his lack of wider experience and his narrow professional background, with a degree in Commerce, does not give many far more aware New Zealanders any confidence in the prospects ahead. What are the implications for a country where its leader has become virtually autocratic – with seemingly little knowledge of the usual consequences, historically,  if  his gamble is wrong?  And how should we regard a long-time ambitious  leader with a naive expectation that in the important issues he is the one who knows best?

Tyrannical may seem too radicalised a verdict. But what when we are now having to contend with an individual who, in spite of his soothing promises,  rides roughshod over the views of by far the majority , which Key now has a record of doing in crucial areas? We should be constantly aware of that first watershed, his overbearing ignoring of the over 85% of New Zealanders who with good reason, opposed the anti-smacking legislation.

Our punitive carbon trading taxes? And yet this Prime Minister must well know that there has been no significant global warming since 1988,  after a period of acknowledged natural warming by those scientists not constrained to propagate a self-serving myth for their own funding purposes. The discredited ENRON’s promotion of the global warming beat-up led the way for politicians to impose yet more taxes, and our Key-led government rushed to be head of the pack – while in Australia, Labor leader Julia Gillard has been rechristened Gilliard for her pre-election lie that she had no intention of implementing such a policy – a promise she broke very soon post-election.

In practical terms, it is now almost impossible to escape the conclusion that we have no New Zealand parliamentary government genuinely involved in cooperative decision-making. Instead, we have a very determined Prime Minister whose personal decisions none of his Cabinet dare oppose – because it is common knowledge a substantial number of National Party MPs did not support either the anti-smacking legislation – nor the Emissions Trading Scheme – and the same probably goes for the watershed racist legislation that Key is backing, underpinning the move to encourage a damaging tribalism and separatism,  handing over coastal  property and control rights to iwi with no genuine claim to these –in spite of the usual assertion that this was not going to happen.

The Prime Minister’s actions suggest that his ambitions after the electoral death undoubtedly looming (by which time some of the damage his tenure has done to the country will be as irreversible as that of the equally autocratic Helen Clark)  have for some time lurked elsewhere. Does he see for himself a top United Nations job, Sir John Key in a behind-the-scenes,  tit-for-tat arrangement first set in place when he enthused about Helen Clark’s managerial capabilities – enabling her to begin to fulfil her own ambitions, long perceived to be on the world stage.

Is Key’s eye firmly fixed on the celebrity circuit ahead, with his apartment waiting in London; opportunities to shine on the world scene; meeting up with the “William and Kate” he over-familiarly referred to post-wedding? Could it possibly be that Key is predominately focused on the approval of the top UN makers and shakers, and that,  having already admitted he does not intend to stay in government in Opposition – he is already operating far ahead of the recognition of most media commentators?

If so, and given his pattern of insisting on his own thinking and planning predominating; given that our electorate MPs no longer represent the wishes of their own electorates, right throughout the country – but, for their own survival sake simply endorse whatever decisions their leaders inflict on them – then we have to urgently evaluate how much reality there is in the notion that New Zealand any longer has a democratic government.

If,  as is now the case, we quite obviously don’t have one, then the only practical way forward, the only way of controlling the impositions of politicians like John Key – like Helen Clark before him – is going to be the 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement.

The hour is more than late – but not only are aware New Zealanders joining to help us – See www.100days.co.nz – our movement has now been taken up on the other side of the Tasman. Headed by the well-respected and formidable Emeritus Professor David Flint, in the launching of an Australian version of direct democracy (where the people of the country themselves make the decisions on the directions ahead)  it provides generous website recognition for our first thinking in this area.

“Thank you for inspiring us over the 100 days.”

http://directdemocracy.org.au/

 “….The Citizens’ Veto is a vote by the electors to repeal an Act of Parliament, or some other form of legislation. To trigger this, a prescribed minimum number of those on the electoral roll, would have signed a petition calling for a vote on the proposal…

(This proposal was especially  inspired by the New Zealand 100 Days movement, which would require a public scrutiny of all new legislation during 100 days during which 50,000 could petition for a referendum.)

As with the Christchurch protesters, the way ahead in New Zealand, too, will open up, as enough individuals begin to stand up to be counted

 © Amy Brooke – Convener.

We should be feeling a sense of real loss that New Zealanders are leaving this country – and not just for financial reasons – although, given the mess that successive governments have made monopolising our directions, the gradual impoverishment of a once far more prosperous country is reason enough for those wanting to afford a house – wanting even to afford to support a family – to give up and go. What was once a far more democratic country has been turned into one where the leader of a political party, in cohorts with a small body of influential backers, now is able to inflict his or her wishes on the country. So much for the much vaunted concept of leadership. But what price leadership?

Two contrasting reports recently caught my eye. The first was the demand of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon that Syria’s President Assad stop killing his own people. What the Secretary-General specifically stated was that  “ ‘the old rule ‘ of one-man rule and family dynasty in the Middle East is over“.

One-man rule? It is arguably now well now under way here, brought to an art form under Labour leader Helen Clark – none of her Cabinet apparently ever stood up to her  – and basically carried on by our present Prime Minister, the all-controlling John Key.

We have of course to note the irony underpinning Ban Ki Moon’s over-late demand – an irony which will strike any informed observer noting how often the sheer incompetence, let alone corruption exhibited by the UN itself has resulted in the torture and killing of so many individuals – men, women, children, babies – in countries to which UN forces have been posted to keep the peace. The result has too often been what is still taking place – the propping up of murderous dictatorships, such as the one he now condemns in Syria.

In this respect,  Spectator columnist Aidan Hartley’s extraordinarily shocking account of the damage done by no doubt well-intentioned, if remarkably ham-fisted interference in Africa – the dark continent containing the appalling barbarism of inter-clan, inter-tribal rivalries and the recent gung-ho, utterly unrealistic overseeing of genocidal areas by both UN and American forces -  is a must-read, if almost unbearably so.

The Zanzibar Chest is one of the most compelling, deeply saddening, first-hand accounts of modern Africa today, its brutalised, vicious, utterly corrupt warlords (the worst of them feted at the White House in the West’s usual misguided attempt to cultivate supposedly well-disposed tyrants as the lesser of two evils – which they very rarely are) and the hellhole into which modern Somalia, for example has turned. This is a Somalia where some UN officials lied to hide the brutality of operations inevitably and regularly killing families of innocent civilians -and “where others toed a line of propaganda that was palpably absurd to absurd to reporters who went around and saw what was happening.”  Incidents such as a Cobra helicopter opening up with its 20 mm cannon and machine guns and slaughtering 100 gunmen with Somali women and children placed in front of them – some mown down on open ground, others killed trying to take cover in buildings and behind walls – were commonplace – while US Rangers managed to arrest a group of United Nations officials, including whites and females. Little wonder that increasing numbers of Somalis had grievances because of relatives killed in crossfire.

Hartley’s account is not unsympathetic to the US – especially to the predicament of so many of its war-weary, nerve-shattered and terrified soldiers, ordinary individuals who had come to Somalia initially to help people. The inevitable result?  “As the weeks drew on, the Americans grew so frustrated by failure that they resorted to acts of childish nastiness. They would hover in their Black Hawk helicopters just above the streets to cause an updraught that peeled off tin roofs and terrified people inside their homes. …US Cobras repeatedly used a mosque and a Muslim saint’s tomb on the beach south of the city for target practice, half demolishing it. Or they amused themselves by flying into the bush and scattering herds of camels”.

The point that Hartley makes well is that while the ordinary American soldier had come to Somalia initially to help people… “Within months they had become entangled in a crisis created partly by the stupidity of the generals, politicians, and UN bureaucrats”, with one particular Admiral in command apparently inhabiting a surrealistic view of what was happening, utterly at odds with its reality. “What eventually happened was that all the firepower of the huge UN army was needed to defend itself from the people it came to help… When they left, with them went any hopes that the West could help the Somalis put the nation back together….The United Nations had lost countless millions of dollars, the lives of 150 peacekeepers and thousands of Somalis. Yet it had achieved nothing.”

Hartley’s equally graphic description of the murderous enmity between rival ethnic groups and clans in Bosnia reflects his shock, this time at the starving Caucasian POWs filling the cattle barns, the Serbs, avid fan of porn movies trying to argue why they had to murder Muslims – and the fact that the Balkan  killing involved Europeans,  Croatians and Serbians, both Muslim and Christian with supposedly two millennia of civilisation behind them, yet only too happy to turn on and murder their neighbours. Given the present sheer folly of  accommodating Sharia law in Britain; its present push to be recognised in Australia – and no doubt New Zealand; his description of a teenage boy caught stealing a woman’s scarf and  being punished according to Sharia  law by having his right hand and left foot slowly sawn off by a knife (a 10 minute process) we are well overdue to examine the inherent immorality of excessive tolerance…and of our own politically correct bureaucrats’ pretence of regarding all cultures as equal.

Indeed, one of the biggest threats facing civilisation worldwide – and one undermining our own democratic processes in this country – is what can be described as “ethnic democracy” or “race power” – i.e. the  argument that the democratic process can be observed not according to its true value… in that all individuals should be treated equally, regardless of gender, colour, race or creed – but that ethnic minorities should have greater rights  – a claim epitomised in the radicalised Tariana Turia’s specious accusation of “the tyranny of the majority.”

Granted that the people of a country as a whole can get issues wrong – it is then up to the same people to correct these. (Sweden did so twenty years later revoking its permissive, pro- cannabis legislation). However, the even greater tyranny is that of the majority by the minority. As Black American writer Thomas Sowell reminds us, the latter is a direct attack on the will of the public at large – successfully and manipulatively used by activist racial minorities to bully the majority through distortions of history, guilt trips, emotional blackmailing, and a never-ceasing demand for endless “compensation” – regardless of the costs to a country at large.

It is happening in New Zealand – it is in fact part of a world-wide, long in the planning, basically Marxist-inspired movement to bring down the West and its stabilising values – particularly those underpinned by Christianity.

At various points in history individuals have stepped forward – self-elected leaders who ultimately not only greatly damage the country in which they were born – as with a Hitler, Pol Pot, and a Mussolini. Others, media-canonised, will very possibly elicit a more moderate endorsement in the years ahead. How close to the truth of things was the film Invictus, for example, queries John Whitehall in a perceptive review, a film emotionally portraying “Nelson Mandela as a man of peace unembittered by his years of imprisonment and with strength of leadership based on a clarity of wisdom that was altogether saintly”. (News Weekly, April 17, 2010)

I recall a Nelson Mandela whose cause not even Amnesty International would support, because he refused to renounce violence as part of the revolution he was planning. On his release from imprisonment this saintly individual then founded the ANC, the Spear of the Nation, which had no compunction about blowing up supermarkets – even given the inevitable killing of women and children. I recall, too, that Mandela left his first wife, a nurse who worked to put him through a law degree, deserting his four children. His second soul mate, Winnie Mandela, was very much involved in the “official ANC policy to render the homelands ungovernable by violence” with the horrific brutal practice of “necklacing” with petrol-burning tyres moderate black South Africans who opposed them politically.

Mandela the saint has seemingly never tired of obligingly posing for photographers at Robben Island, the scene of his long imprisonment from which the South African government would have preferred to release him – had he been willing to renounce violence – which he refused to do. His fine words in recent years about putting hatred in one pocket – recognising its legitimacy, but putting it on one side – are less puzzling when one recalls, as reviewer Whitehall reminds us, is that “it is all too easily forgotten that many African National Congress identities were leaders in the South African Communist party whose Leninist doctrines insisted that their party …should alone exercise political leadership.” Far from this being the time of reconciliation that Mandela likes to evoke, “… in these years of Soviet -sponsored violence throughout South Africa, Samora Machel, the Mozambique leader of FRELIMO, whose widow subsequently married Mandela, declared that his philosophy was firmly-orientated toward Marxist-Leninist socialism, and presided over a reign of terror “characterised by executions”. Re-education camps and attempts at agricultural collectivisation resulted in hundreds of thousands of death from starvation. In East Timor, the left-wing underground resistance movement renamed itself FRETILIN after FRELIMO. Mandela himself was co-founder of the military wing of the South African Communist Party, led by Joe Slovo who, faced with the collapse of the Soviet Union regarded Marxist- Leninist theory as still applicable but merely misapplied.  It was “now politically expedient for the party to be reconciled with its former enemies”.

 In a thoughtful and balanced review, Whitehall points that for all his fine words which so entrance Western politicians and the media, the case for Mandela’s sainthood is at its weakest when judged against the common wisdom that a man can be judged by the friends he keeps. “Within months of his release from prison in 1990, Mandela visited Libya to receive the International Qadhafi Prize for Human Rights (described by one commentator as “equivalent to the Heinrich Himmler Prize for Religious Tolerance”). In 1997 he referred to Colonel Qadhafi as “my dear brother” and gave him South Africa’s highest award, the Order of Good Hope. Later Mandela was to call Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yassir Arafat “a comrade in arms”  and to declare his indebtedness to the “Islamic revolution”.  The Solidarity conference in 1995 between Cuba and South Africa held in Durban had Mandela declaring Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to be a man of the masses, although, as Whitehall points out, Cuba’s jails with their notorious rat-holes –ratoneras – would make South Africa’s Robben Island look like a resort.

Even the predominantly left-wing journalist Gwynne Dyer, reviewing the 100th anniversary of the African National Congress,  notes that the way Mandela choose Mbeki as his successor to lead the ANC was “considerably less than democratic” … and that “the ANC doesn’t do democracy well”. In reality, Mbeki’s crazed denial of the cause of AIDS condemned many thousands to death, orphaning so many children, while the anti-white power shift in South Africa has seen a privileged black élite itself gaining considerable wealth and power and position – at the expense of the black majority. Its perceived corruption has seen the ANC vote steadily falling.

          Do we have any great men – not simply those with what is cynically called the gift of the gab – that dangerous fluency which has moved mobs throughout history? Certainly the promotion of the cult of leadership has been hugely problematic.  I recently asked a number of individuals if they could name one outstanding living New Zealander respected not for his her sporting prowess – and not a politician – but one widely recognised for integrity, intelligence, learning, wisdom, gravitas – and courage?

What does it say about us as a country that although one or two  investigative writers were tentatively mentioned for their courage in tackling the issues of the day, no one could think of any living individual who fitted the description. The former Professor Blaicklock seemed to be the nearest. And yet I could immediately name at least half a dozen well-qualified Australians who would fit this description – and other brave individuals from our preceding generations. So what has happened to this country?

The second media report that caught my eye was the death of what was (even given the realities of the human condition and the frailties which we all share) – a truly great man. At the end 2011, the year of the so-called Arab Spring in which millions worldwide were rebelling against dictatorships, a truly great individual received a magnificent state funeral in Prague. On Christmas Eve,   in a final act of great respect to Vaclav Havel, the man hailed as giving democracy to the Czech nation at the head of the world’s last great flowering of freedom – the entire Czech nation apparently came to a standstill.  The country farewelled a 75 year old man, “the dissident playwright who inspired the anti-Communist revolutions of central Europe in 1989 and reunited his country with the West after four decades of Soviet rule”. Thousands of mourners, including presidents and prime ministers, reportedly packed into the ancient St Vitus Cathedra in Prague Castle for a Requiem Mass that began with a minute’s silence.  “Outside on a wet and freezing day thousands more people packed into a castle courtyard and Hradcany Square, coming across the country with many wearing the Czech national colours on their lapels.”

Not just the Czech nation but the whole world loses with the passing of such a man – the individual of such integrity that he or she will risk losing freedom, facing possible imprisonment, torture or even death because of his or her belief in the importance of democracy – of the individual standing against the power of the state.

New Zealanders – those who have not already left because they say they cannot stand what has happened to this country – are now facing the fact that the power of the state is becoming even more tyrannical not only in our weighted, race-based politics but in that gradual diminishing of  freedoms supposedly removed for our own good.  The increasing attack upon individuals, such as banning this or that; the infamous anti-family, anti-smacking legislation – which our forbears would never have tolerated; the banning, under the pretence of the global warming rort  (the so-called destructive effects of carbon dioxide) – of that age-old solace of the open fire; the call for people to be not “allowed” to smoke in the open air (where there is no danger posed to others of secondary smoking); the constant dreaming up of compliance demands on the professions and on the trades – government bureaucracies’ “requirements” which restrict individuals’ freedoms, insult their own judgment: all these and more, accumulatively, are making the practice of professions and trades in this country over-complicated, increasingly burdensome,  and joyless.

Most dangerous of all are the attacks from without – with New Zealanders gradually losing control of their own land – considerably large areas of which have now passed into foreign ownership – and the cynical sale of highly productive state assets, in theory owned by New Zealanders themselves – for short term gain by cash-strapped governments which have so mismanaged the economy.

We have the inherent contradiction of the large power companies insisting that their continual price rises are justified – while at the same time independent analysis reveals that we have an oversupply of generation and power companies competing for customers, which should ensure electricity prices remaining stable over the next few years. How do we reconcile the fact that Powershop, e.g. a retailing subsidiary of state-owned Meridian,  puts the oversupply at more than 1000 gigawatt hours per year for the next five years, with its chief executive Ari Sargent stating that this excess of supply is likely to mean downward pressure will remain on retail electricity prices for a number of years. Reportedly, several of New Zealand’s major electricity companies, including state-owned Genesis, have signalled that unless the outlook for electricity prices improves, they are unlikely to build new generators. Yet we can guarantee that the cost of electricity to New Zealand families will continue to inexorably, and inexcusably, rise.

 It is now widely recognised that the housing market is so overpriced that the dream of owning one’s own house is beyond the reach of many New Zealand couples with families. How did this ever come about?

But one of the most crushing burdens on the economy is the continual, challengeable venal accommodation of ethnic demands by tribal-part Maori organisations promising in return a so-called Maori vote – that of a tribal collective – to the political party most prepared to pay up.

So-called “ethnic democracy” is no democracy at all. Yet where is the politician who will make a stand against the tribal corruption of falsified, highly inventive and elasticised claims which have caused so much damage to this country – not just in economic terms? And towards this so-called “ethnic democracy” is the direction in which our apparently corrupt major political parties are now heading, given the lack of politicians of integrity to stand up to be counted – and to warn against the dangers ahead.

It is almost incredible that the Top of the South iwi, at a time of such financial stringency for so many, for example, are going to be given a $400 million regional cash and asset injection from treaty settlements before the end of this financial year. It is no wonder that the tribes, whose massively lucrative windfalls never filter down to ordinary tribal members, are now being wooed by overseas interests approaching them for joint ventures. The Maori economy has already reached $37 billion – money largely grown from the raiding of taxpayer’s pockets to settle supposed grievances held by Maori against previous governments – grievances in relation to which today’s taxpayers have had no part to play and, arguably, should have no liability. New Zealanders’ sense of fair play and goodwill has taken a severe battering, knowing that much of the present tribal treasure chests’ wealth has not been earned by the iwi concerned – either by their own hard work or initiative – but largely taken from other New Zealanders because of a persistent hands-out mentality, underpinned by an ever-present sense of grievance – much of which has no actual basis in reality.

Questions need to be urgently asked Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Chris Finlayson, about the Top of the South settlement, which apparently concerns claims for land for which the Ngai Tahu were already previously compensated by the 1991 signing of the vote-buying treaty by Jim Bolger and Doug Graham,  on the half of the previous National Government. This being the case, should not Ngai Tahu be requested to refund that part of their dubious settlement for land which, it is apparently now acknowledged, did not belong to them, and should not have been included in their “compensation package”.

While the Ngai Tahu iwi, an originally small group of largely European-descended iwi  (for this reason they were known as the White Tribe)  received $170 million in settlement assets, this highly controversial settlement from which public input was disregarded would very possibly never have taken place had it not been for the same highly experienced and determined Wellington lawyer Chris Finlayson, now playing a highly activist role as Minister of Treaty Negotiations, assisting them to push their claim against a largely ignorant, insufficiently prepared, and demonstrably incompetent Crown Ministry. In so many of the claim areas,  the evidence was quite simply so much against Ngai Tahu, the historical facts so much at variance with what their highly manipulative spokespersons were claiming, that even the previous Maori Affairs Select Committee had rejected their claim. Many today would argue that the claims advanced in the Ngai Tahu settlement are well overdue to be re-examined by a Royal Commission of Enquiry.

Moreover, it can well be argued that the plight of an impoverished Maori underclass can be blamed at least partly on the soft thinking of a Treaty- settlement National government which quite deliberately excluded those Maori in most need – the unemployed or impoverished with no tribal affiliation.

It can also be very much blamed on what are now perceived as fat-cat corporate iwi with no intention whatever of passing on the benefits of the settlements to the poor and needy of their own tribes – a suggestion firmly rejected both by Ngai Tahu leader Tipene O’Regan and Tainui’s Robert Mahuta. Essentially, the money was to go towards tribal activism, with an eye to  wresting even more gain from taxpayers at large. Tribal interests have lain not in helping their needy – or directing the settlement proceeds for the benefit of Maori at large – but in preference given to those committed to learn Maori (Walker or rather, reinvented Maori); to placing their own people in influential positions within the media;  in handsomely financially rewarding tribal executives; in advancing family associates, and in facilitating law degrees for their young, with particular interest in the Treaty of Waitangi and its ongoing reinvention.

New Zealanders’ somewhat naive expectation that ultimately the demands of radical Maori activists would cease have not been met. As part of the whole contradictory “ethnic democracy” movement, corporate Maoridom has been working hard behind the scenes to establish in this country a new constitution elevating a supposedly cohesive but non-existent Maoridom to a power- sharing of New Zealand’s assets, economy, and institutions with the Crown. This audacious move is being advanced on the basis of a supposed partnership between some Maori chiefs and the Crown at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. That there never was any question of a partnership between Maori and the Crown is provably an illusionary concept which would have subsequently brought about any government tax-take being owed both to Maori and the Crown, as equal partners.

Increasingly, New Zealanders, looking at the now $37 billion Maori economy, largely given rather than earned, feel that this is what has in effect been happening – that they have been taxed unfairly without their consent, for claimed injustices which have had nothing at all to do with this present generation – a “compensation” which they initially regarded with generosity and a wish to see fair play, a generosity which has subsequently curdled.

Concerned New Zealanders are not unaware that the push for a new constitution is likely to hand over substantial power to the courts which are not accountable in the way that Parliament is supposed to be – although there is now very little evidence of this accountability – given the decline of genuine electorate representation in Parliament, and the corruption of democracy by today’s follow-the-leader replacement.

We should make no mistake about this: “race power” politics is behind the move to grant special privileges, concessions, rights – such as un-democratic representation on local government and community boards on the basis of being part-Maori. And this involves one of the biggest anomalies of all – that individuals by far non-Maori, in genetic terms, can now claim injustice – on the strength of 1/8^th, 1/16^th, ,1/32 or less of Maori inheritance – not only can – but are already doing so, to benefit themselves – at the expense of others.

It is a rort – and should be recognised as such. Like many others, I can think of top performing part-Maori medical specialists and other doctors, lawyers, judges and bankers, dentists, wealthy business owners – by no means needy New Zealanders from all walks of life,  who can trace some smidgen or other of Maori ancestry – no matter how tenuous – which would give them or their children the right to privileged  university placings, assisted scholarships, various kinds  of undemocratic preference  – at the expense, inevitably – of everybody else.

Until the mid-70s the legal requirement for any individuals claiming to be Maori was to be at least 50% genetically Maori. For example, The Native Land Act 1909 defined a Maori as “A person belonging to the Aboriginal race of New Zealand and includes a half caste and a person immediately in blood between half caste and a person of pure descent from the race.” (The more generous legal requirement for the 1990s ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) was that the claimants had to be at least one quarter Indian, or Inuit. Less than that was acknowledged to be predominantly a disqualification for claiming largely ethnic inheritance).

 However, we have now carried the definition of Maori to absurd lengths – and this was brought about quite calculatedly by activist Maori pressure for economic advantage. For example, the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974, bringing to fruition the neo-Marxist activism of the 60s, where young Maori radicals were taken and trained overseas, and now defined Maori as “A person of the Maori race of New Zealand and includes any descendent of such a person.”

 Given that there are now no full-blooded Maori in New Zealand, this whole question of ongoing, and to New Zealanders at large, ruinously costly “compensation” has become increasingly problematic – particularly given the number of now quite openly spurious claims being endorsed by Parliament which, under this recent National Government (and once again we see the hand of  Chris Finlayson, Minister of Treaty Negotiations) has not even required the burden of proof before paying out hundreds of millions of dollars on the basis of what are essentially challengeable assertions.

What it is costing productive New Zealand is brought home to us by the fact that Finance Minister Bill English’s office recently revealed that the only 160,000 households earning more than 150,000 a year are subsidising the rest of the country. Those earning less than 50,000 are receiving more in benefits than the tax they pay by almost $3 billion. Columnist Jon Morgan reports Christchurch-based accountant Pita Alexander’s conclusion, in an over-all view of our directions, that “90% of New Zealand MPs in his lifetime (he is in his 70s) deserve very little credit for anything”.  (Most of us would regard even his 10% exclusion as over-generous).

There is no doubt that our now race-based politics, as well as our self- serving politicians are costing the country.  We are well overdue to insist on a realistic legal definition of Maori. We are also well overdue to insist that those who are not predominantly genetically Maori should not be regarded as such, for statistical purposes and economic and political advantage over all others.

New Zealanders only way forward to recover so much of what has been lost is to insist that this country proceed on the basis of the age-old, unbettered principle of equal rights for all – regardless of colour, gender, race, or creed – and not superior rights – the so-called “ethnic democracy” – i.e. not democracy at all – more accurately called race-power politics.

But where in our now leader-dominated political parties, with our Members of Parliament no longer representing us – but intent on maintaining their own hierarchy, privileges – and maximising their own financial returns on the basis of the positions they hold – where can we find individuals like Vaclav Havel to stand up against this growing tyranny?

Given that history has brought home to us the highly problematic fact of the notion of leadership of – we are well overdue to recognise that individual initiative is, after all, the most important thing.

Where then are the individuals to be found – what are essentially our own great and good – prepared to stand one by one, side-by-side, right across the country?

Such is a real democracy…

 The only realistic way of going forward to achieve this is through our movement –the 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand. Check out How It Works on our website www.100days.co.nz . And if you have already joined us – Thank you – and do tell others…

 ©Amy Brooke

It is no accident that the protest vote – using non-voting as a weapon – markedly increased in this past election.  Whereas, in the past, refusing to vote might have been regarded as wasting a vote, the tide is turning with a new perception of its importance as a highly strategic move. Our 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement is a prime mover in this initiative.

For many, withholding their vote was a political protest against the thoroughly undemocratic actions not only of the present National Party, but of its preceding Labour coalition government – let alone, previous to that, Jim Bolger’s National vote-buying government. Should we forget Doug Graham, as Minister in Charge of Treaty Negotiations, ratifying the deeply flawed Ngai Tahu settlement – fronted on behalf of what has been called the White Tribe, that highly manipulative corporate body then assisted by the now present Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Chris Finlayson?  Should we forget Graham’s instructing the Maori Affairs Select Committee to in effect ignore the nearly 400 submissions pointing out the reasons why the Ngai Tahu settlement was arguably a gigantic con – on the grounds that the bill had already been signed by him and the Prime Minister?

Should we forget the previous Labour government’s highly activist Minister of Justice, Geoffrey Palmer, who, with the bit between his teeth, was responsible for that extraordinarily ill-considered decision to turn back the clock and renegotiate the impossible – to adjudicate inter-related Maori claims dating back over a century and a half?  Its consequences? The formerly warring and now competitively jostling Maori tribal and sub-tribal claims, even down to mere hapu scrabbling for in many cases highly dubious, unjustified compensation. Where should it end?

Right here, say by far the majority of New Zealanders. The deliberate, strategic refusal of so many to vote is beginning to be recognised as a very powerful political weapon. And the turning of this tide has only just begun.

Our 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement strongly advocated this tactical move before the recent election – withholding from our now thoroughly unrepresentative political parties what they most urgently want from the electorate – the party vote. This ideologically-conceived, but in practice now utterly undemocratic provision, leapfrogs into Parliament hand-picked favourites of a party leader who owe no allegiance to either the electorate, nor to New Zealanders at large.

It is the party vote which, added up over the whole country, decides how many MPs in total each party will get. After the number of electorate MPs has been settled, in theory, those extra potential MPs to which a party is entitled, supposedly ranked by loyal members throughout the country to decide the most deserving, will be promoted from the list according to their ranking.

The party vote is now regarded as far more important in determining in the next government as the electorate vote. Theoretically, the use of a party list provides for a more “representative” Parliamentary team. Theoretically.

However, what could be more truly representative of democratic outcomes than government with the consent of the people – i.e. inevitably the wishes of the majority – not skewed according to special interest or minority racial pressures?  The feel-good theory that individuals lacking in appeal to the general public can be offered a place high on the list  - to arrive in Parliament without even a smidgen  of electorate  backing – is highly suspect,  and has proved to be more than problematic.

In this recent Parliamentary term alone we have seen such individuals for whom nobody voted not only become ministers,  unanswerable to the public, but in the case of some,  such as Steven Joyce, wielding considerable power within their own parties. Joyce himself, although merely a list MP, dominated the National clique determining the list rankings even before he himself was in Parliament. Nobody doubts that the inner clique under the highly determined, aw-shucks John Key, gives the electorate MPs their orders. The latter demonstrably show no loyalty now to their electorates, but to their leader.

The proof of the pudding is in the landmark abnegation of electoral responsibility and accountability whereby every single National and Labour MP simply ignored the wishes of their own constituents – when over 85% of the country said No-No-No to the highly subversive anti-smacking legislation now casting its punitively threatening shadow over the lives and commonsense practices of good parents.

Quite simply, electorate MPs did not respect their own constituents’ – any more than they respected the majority’s – wishes on the economically and socially damaging Coastal and Marine Area legislation – nor on the extravagantly unnecessary Emissions Trading Scheme. Turning their back on those who had voted for them, they played the age old game of Follow-the-Leader. But in the case of New Zealanders who expect proper accountability from the MPs they vote for, the appropriate word – lickspittle – came to mind.

It is no exaggeration to point out that the misuse of the concept and practice of leadership by highly determined, no doubt charismatic leaders throughout history, has been very much part of what is essentially a basic underground warfare against the people of a country, used by those wielding and manipulating power for their own ends. When the same people of a country come sufficiently of age intellectually to realise that human nature does not change, and that the leopard, down through the centuries, has not changed  its spots, then at last the individuals who comprise the voting population can begin to learn to use their vote strategically.

In this respect, voters in some countries have been much smarter than others in refusing to hand over their authority – the real power and indeed the dignity of individuals – to a political oligarchy which has every intention of dominating them – and of foisting off on them policies which can be seen to be ultimately damaging – but which are useful for the hierarchy’s purposes. Switzerland in particular, taking a different and more intelligent path from that of the United States at the time, built into its own constitutional reform that ultimate safeguard against political deal-broking, damaging directions for this country, and the overweening ambitions of highly dominating, even bullying individuals, by providing for that 100 Days compulsory period of scrutiny after the passing of any Parliamentary legislation.  This allows the Swiss people to examine it – and either allow its passage – or challenge it – with the will of the people finally prevailing and binding its representatives. What could be more democratic?

And why would a thinking individual give a party vote to any political party which operates according to the dictats of its leader and his/her hand-picked advisers – a party whose policies constantly work against rather than for the positive good of this country?  What about the blatant vote-buying of those radicalised Maori iwi crafty enough to organise themselves into a political power bloc – as with the misnamed the Maori Party,  whose 1.4% of the vote shows how very few of Maori descent wanted to support them? With John Key’s compliance, the Maori party has been inexcusably allowed to wield far more influence than its very minor membership would and should entitle it to, although it is not alone here. MMP has been a system which obviously disadvantages majority New Zealanders.

Correspondingly, we have the Labour Party’s continual and cynical extension of what has equally been mis-called “social welfare” – not the genuine safety net for the truly disadvantaged and needy – but enforcing that utterly unwarranted expectation that everybody else should pay for them which is so very characteristic of an underclass of shirkers and bludgers. The number of court appearances by those on welfare benefits able-bodied enough to commit burglaries and similar crimes makes a farce out of government patronage for those who will not, rather than those who cannot, work. Ah, but they can vote. And so their vote can be bought.

 And what about the increasing burden of compliance activities and costs being loaded on the back of small businessmen, the very lifeblood of the economy? What of the requirements on employers to manage PAYE, or even the student loan deductions for their employees? Employers comprising  professionals, tradespeople, owners of businesses are required to carry out unpaid and time-consuming activities to service the government – tasks with no relationship whatever to the service they are providing. What of the unjustifiable demand that employers should be forced to donate to employees Kiwi Saver schemes? Why?  The constant war against small businesses is carried on as much by the National Party as by Labour. How many self-employed small business owners or professionals can even afford the four weeks, if not longer, annual holiday that is a requirement for them to provide for employees?

The only wonder is that New Zealanders to date have been so very compliant – some say apathetic. But no: New Zealanders are not apathetic. They may be slow to a public show of anger but they nevertheless deeply resent the radicalized part-Maori conning of government for unjustifiable extra privileges, concessions, special rights, and special representation on city councils, on boards… wherever demands can be made for special funding, special attention, special representation.

The growing push of what black American writer Thomas Sowell warned is very much with us now – the bullying of the majority by minority groups playing a non-existent, “special entitlement” card – and that of a spurious discrimination.  The furtive, essentially underhand activities of part-Maori radicals now aiming for a thoroughly undemocratic “power-sharing” written constitution by deliberately twisting the intent and wording of the treaty of Waitangi to claim a false “partnership”  with the Crown is as much a concern to many other part-Maori as to  all other New Zealanders. The manipulative invoking of the word “racist” against those speaking out about the whittling away of our democracy by these self-serving, power-hungry groups has been deeply offensive to most New Zealanders.

There is a growing realisation that it is going to be possible in future to say no to our political oligarchies attempting to wield power for their own purposes. But the only effective way of doing so is for New Zealanders to refuse to endorse legislation that they would never have voted for.

No wonder the politicians are panicking. The refusal of so many New Zealanders to vote in this recent election is an unmistakable protest – whether a passive or active one – against what has now become a thoroughly unrepresentative democracy. Any very typical reaction by politicians to force New Zealanders to vote will be vigorously contested. It is reasonable for adult New Zealanders to be required to enrol, in order to exercise their vote, should they decide to do so. It would be utterly fascist to compel them to vote – and the fact that this may happen elsewhere does not provide any justification for its happening here.

The writing is on the wall for our major political parties and the thoroughly undemocratic provisions they have inflicted on all New Zealanders. The growing intolerance of the sheer arrogance and power grab of our political groups is paralleled worldwide in the growing reaction against top-down decisions. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is too late paying lip-service to the justified resentment of the British – even of members of his own Cabinet – at his high-handed refusal to give British voters a say on the outcome of the new EU treaty being pushed by a once more problematic Germany teaming up with its old enemy, France. It is deliberately designed to remove even further constitutional freedoms already gradually taken from the people of Britain, as the price of joining the ill-conceived EU with its even more ill-conceived shared currency, the euro. The extraordinary burden of taxation inflicted on the British as a result of the edicts of supremely bureaucratic Brussels apparatchiks, unelected and unrepresentative by any democratic definition, is now seen as unsustainable – by all except those politicians with ambitions on the world scene after political life.

We would be naive indeed to think that this same ambition is by no means foreign to our own political leaders – and the question whether they owe their allegiance to New Zealand and its people  – or to the powerbrokers beyond this country who can help smooth their way onto the world scene – may well account for some of the extraordinary directions inflicted on this country by our recent and present political hierarchies.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…. A phrase now used by the Danes protesting against the establishment of a so-called fat tax this year – invokes an acknowledgement of the corrupting consequences of self-serving ambition. I’m reminded of a hard-working small businessman’s own vigorous protest against what is happening too, in this small country, observing that there is nothing new under the sun… that “the fat cats get fatter…” while the lean and hungry Left waits its own turn to again seize power.

Something is very wrong when most New Zealanders feel that they can no longer trust any political party. And who can any longer doubt this? It is almost amusing to see John Key now attempting to flourish democratic credentials (that he certainly does not have) when noting the need for local government reform, by stating that  “further change to local authorities need to be community-led.” Why only to local authorities?  The need is equally great for central government reform – and it is equally as important for this to be community-led. But then we are simply hearing a politician playing the crowd – given the minimal attention paid to the community’s views in regard to the forced amalgamation of Auckland city – as problematic as was foreseen.

Those who turned their back on the political process at the last election in a determined protest are the tip of the iceberg.

 The growing number of those who realise that yes, something effective can certainly be done about this, about reclaiming our country, are backing our 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement – www.100days.co.nz.  We are well and truly on our way, as many of you already know. 

Tell everybody!

 © Amy Brooke

That the political party system in this country has very much contributed to New Zealand slipping so far down any scale of prosperity and productivity has become very obvious.  National has had three years to lay out a concrete plan for redirecting this country to encourage business enterprise, grow confidence and support initiative.

Its dismal failure can be sheeted home to a number of things. Foremost has been its decision to operate as a tightly closed company board, over-dependent on the populist appeal of its smooth chief executive, National Party leader John Key, a former currency trader – or, to borrow a phrase – a money shuffler. Contrary to the party’s claim that it is successful in office because it can rely upon the business acumen of a self-made millionaire – John Key is hardly that, a successful businessman, in the sense of developing and overseeing a company to provide employment and produce goods or services which have contributed to the country – indirectly receiving the rewards of doing so.

According to Wikipedia, Key joined Merrill Lynch Merchant Bank as head of Asian Foreign Exchange in Singapore. Promoted in that same year to Merrill’s global head of foreign exchange, he was based in London where he is estimated to have earned around US $2.25 million a year – including bonuses – about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates. In the right job and given the right contacts, it is apparently not difficult to become a millionaire when employed by the major banks dealing in moving money backwards and forwards internationally. This process has nothing whatever to do with the self-made millionaire notion of a man who has rolled his sleeves up to invent, or start, develop and work hard at a new business – with all its social and economic benefits.

This well-rewarded currency trader millionaire gained his name “the smiling assassin” when some co-workers reportedly noted his “maintaining his usual cheerfulness while sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis.” John Key was also a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 – 2001.

The must-see DVD INSIDE JOB, fronted by Matt Damon, has blown the lid off the cauldron of scandal that brewed following the shocking events and corruption underpinning the economic crisis of 2008, leading to a global financial meltdown. The consequences of the cynicism, egoism, greed, and scandalous lack of concern shown by major banks and financial houses  – let alone the very rating agencies which were supposed to oversee them – are still with us and compounding, rather than lessening. This includes the human misery contained in the loss, to so many millions of people, of their jobs, their homes, their future.  

The film INSIDE JOB was screened at the 2010 Cannes film Festival in May and won the Academy award for Best documentary feature, well reviewed by film critics who praised its pacing, research, and exposition of complex material.

There are lessons for New Zealand in the deregulation  of the American financial industry from 1980 onwards. At the end of the 1980s a savings and loan crisis cost US taxpayers about $124 billion – according to web sources. By the late 1990s, a few giant firms dominated the financial sector. Scandalously, the Internet stock bubble burst because investment banks had promoted Internet companies that they knew would fail, resulting in $5 trillion investor losses.

The (to the layman, barely comprehensible) notion of derivatives, becoming popular in the industry, helped to destabilise it. Efforts to regulate these were prevented by the Commodities Futures Modernisation Act of 2000 – (“modernisation” is always such a usefully manipulative word) – backed by key officials. By the 2000s five investment banks dominated the industries – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch  (the bank where the Prime Minister had been previously employed, in Singapore and London).  To compound the scandal of what should have been a free, transparent market of enterprise, but which is now recognised as having been operating in a vacuum of those moral values necessary to underpin capitalism, three rating agencies, Moody’s, Standard & Poors, and Fitch had been bestowing AAA ratings right up to the collapse of the banks.

In New Zealand, the same ideology of, essentially, light-handed regulation, promoted particularly by the New Zealand Business Roundtable, is seen in retrospect to have removed some of the safeguards previously regarded as necessary to protect individuals and businesses. The recent collapse of so many finance companies, costing thousands of New Zealanders their lifetimes’ and retirement savings – allied to operational tragedies such as the Pike River Mine disaster, where the removal of experienced inspectors undoubtedly contributed to what some see as an unacceptable laissez-faire overseeing of its operations; and  the Cave Creek disaster of a shoddily built, improperly supervised Conservation Department platform,  are two egregious examples of how efforts to remove what was argued to be over-heavy state control of business and financial markets are now belatedly recognised as naïvely and ideologically motivated.

Moreover,  the lesson that the more our society moves into what anti-Christian apologists like to hail as a post-Christian era, the more regulation is going to be needed to replace the constraints once felt by individuals whose initiatives were underpinned by Christian ethics, and the operation of conscience, has apparently been lost. A premature calling for the demise of respect for Christianity contributes to the demise of respect for those values necessary for the rights and responsibilities of individuals to be emphasised. It also lessens the possibility of a truly democratic society. Essentially, it is equivalent to arguing for society to operate in a moral vacuum – each deciding on their pick and mix moral codes.  Yet the  increasing lack of those traditionally underpinning the West  has brought its inevitable consequences – some of which have, horrendously, already wreaked enormous damage.

There is no doubt of the damage done to the concept of the free market, when the market has been seen after all to be not at all free – but captured by the large corporations determined on self advantage and self-interest.

Late in the day as it is, and with an election looming, well overdue questions  need to be raised about any version of capitalism which operates in the absence of conscience and of basic standards of honesty and transparency. In a sense this is a tragedy for the concept of free market – a tragedy for New Zealand too, as there is no doubt that the agenda of the far Left, whether dominated by communist or socialist ideologies, has waged war against the individual and everything he or she stands for.

 Unfortunately, too, as investigative journalist Ian Wishart details in his closely researched new book - Daylight Robbery – New Zealanders have been taken to the cleaners these recent decades. Wishart’s cover focus is  on state asset sales, the government’s controversial  dealings in relation to Alan Hubbard; compulsory Kiwi Saver, the global crisis; finance company collapses. (We can note, too, how much it profits company liquidators to spin out the investigative process as long as possible – and how much correspondingly less those who were cheated by crooked directors will eventually receive back.)

It is highly relevant to our election choices to note that the justification for the free market, the fairest and freest way of conducting business transactions between mutually advantaged individuals, companies, etc. has also been damagingly undermined by far Right ideology in this country, since the imposition of the Roger Douglas reforms. While many arguably were overdue, very fair questions have been raised about their damaging, tops-down implementation which sidelined New Zealanders, totally undemocratically, rather than involving them in much-needed debate about the way forward.

The ideology of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, perceived as  barracking for the interests of big business – and with some of its members involved in dubious events in our recent history – has also been damaging. The fact of so many New Zealand families losing their children to overseas, not just for the usual OE experience, but because they have found the burden of the student loans insurmountable, can well and truly be sheeted home to the Roundtable’s input into the Todd report, at the height of its highest influence, with Doug Myers as its media-courted chairman. The abolition of the apprenticeship scheme – disliked by the big businesses that subsequently lost the apprentices they had trained – led to a nationwide dearth of well-skilled tradesmen – contrasted with the correspondingly inappropriate promoting to the universities of ill-educated youngsters unable to cope even with the basic literacy requirements of university courses.

 The mandarin-like way in which the Roundtable operated; its wining and dining of government ministers; its wrong-headed promotion of asset sales – which of course ultimately most benefits big businesses – rather than the mythical mom and pop investors; its unwillingness to acknowledge the ability of well-funded overseas buyers to far outbid New Zealanders capacity to keep our farmland in New Zealand hands – let alone the folly and short-sightedness of arguing for the sale of our productive dairy farms.  New Zealanders are,  rightly, deeply concerned about the sale of our actual land, to supposedly private, Hong-Kong fronted – but, in reality, Communist Chinese government-involved companies.

All these initiatives were blithely supported by the recently deceased Roger Kerr. One can respect an individual for his courage, commitment and good intent. But there is a very good case for the argument that 25 years at the helm of an organisation which above all represented big business interests in this country – despite disclaimers – was too long – especially when this also involved writing the speeches for its influential members to deliver. When the far Right is seen as simply the opposite side of the coin to the Far left, with small businesses, the individual and family under damaging pressure from both ends of the political spectrum, that basic freedom which alone can underpin a stable democracy is under attack.

Two or three decades back prescient books were being written by writers such as Geoff McDonald  and Dennis McKenna pointing out that New Zealand was at the crossroads. We are now well past these crossroads. We have gone a long way down the track away from what should be very basic freedoms for families and individuals, when our country is no longer governed by elected representatives,  chosen by individual electorates – and representing the wishes of that electorate. It would be a very naive individual who still regards this as happening. On the contrary, despite any superficial show of local consultation, our political parties’ hierarchies now make the final choices of who will stand for the parties. For example – and doubtless the same thing happened with Labour… party leader John Key himself picked the previous election’s party lists. So much for democratic input – resulting in this country having no choice but to vote for the choices of the leaders?

Or does it? Do we, as a people, have any opportunity to become part of the  worldwide movement to reclaim democracy?

 An alternative voting system will not do it,  making superficial changes only. And how many New Zealanders really think it acceptable that National Party Minister Steven Joyce,  previous to the last election,  oversaw the selection of the List candidates, although he himself was merely an unelected List candidate? Not one New Zealander voted him into this pre-eminently powerful position – any more than anyone voted for controversial Treaty Negotiations Minister, Chris Finlayson. So much for democracy.

At present, New Zealanders are being governed by what amounts to that company board referred to earlier, where it is not even the caucus that makes the decisions for the National Party’s MPs, but where they are told what to do by their highly ambitious and populist leader. There is no question of MPs following the wishes of the electorate when an autocratic leader does not allow tolerate dissent, and when the consequences of demotion, loss of perks and privileges and salary are largely what make self-serving decisions for the yes-men and -women who consequently make up the corporate body of the National Party – with Labour showing no signs of being any different.

Those who think this is a harsh assessment need  look only at the curious decision made by John Key to support the agenda of his political foes, the radicalised far Left Sue Bradford and all-dominating Helen Clark, ignoring the wishes of the country with regard to its 85% opposition to the anti-smacking legislation. Similarly the government, as well as the Labour Party, knows full well that the whole man-made global warming cult scenario is a scam -  see  Lying Cheating, Climate Scientists Caught Lying Cheating Again  - by James Delingpole.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100114292/lying-cheating-climate-scientists-caught-lying-cheating-again/

But the spin-off for both parties in the form of higher taxation and increased government power and control has been irresistible.

Why then would you give any political party your vote? Many will, because of a vague concern that they shouldn’t “waste” their vote. However, there is a much stronger case to be made against giving any of the political parties our vote.

It can legitimately be argued that to vote for a party that one knows well will follow its own damaging agenda, ignoring the will of the public, is the real misuse of a democratic vote.

Both National and Labour’s planned path forward will undoubtedly further damage this country…National with its back-against-the-wall,  bankrupt policy of asset sales of property that legitimately belong to all New Zealanders…Labour, with its ill-thought-out capital gains tax -  let alone the tinkering with so many other areas of what can now be seen belong to a country in steep decline. None of  these pre-election  policies have anything at all to do with attempting to restore prosperity to this country. Neither of our major parties have taken on board the lessons that forcing the closing down of our small businesses by  exposing them to the sheer unfairness of international competition against countries paying the workforce a pittance, cannot possibly contribute to our own prosperity.

Not only is there a total absence of any growth strategy – (replaced by the inevitable focus, as usual,  on the excessive social welfare payouts that have exploded as a result of the previous lavish vote-buying by governments – Helen Clark’s Labour’s Left in particular, which have established a demeaning expectancy of “entitlements”on the part of so many) – but  Labour has not yet even begun to address its own  culpability with regard to its former leader Helen Clark and its equally damaging former Finance Minister Michael Cullen’s strong push to actually encourage businesses from this country to move and operate offshore instead.

 Again, with that strange complicity we have begun to note throughout the political oligarchy, Cullen was helpfully promoted by John Key, as soon as he got the opportunity, with a well calculated hand-up.  It beggars belief that these politicians were so mentally challenged that they could not see the consequences for the New Zealand workforce with what has inevitably resulted – so many thousands now displaced from jobs they previously held, so much social instability, stress and concern for  individuals, businesses and families. So much for the principle of -  First, do no harm – and for promoting national prosperity, a living wage for every worker, the ability for a mother to stay at home, where she is needed – instead of even more incentives to make it difficult for her to do so – with the inevitably damaging consequences that accrue when a mother is not at home for her children.

Has it been merely accidental that these strongly promoted reforms were so ill-thought ? If so, the combined IQ of politicians would be even less than most people estimate it. Or was there an agenda? And if so, how different has been that on the part of the far Right from  the far Left? Both political parties have been vote-buying. The inherent flaw of MMP  – that rather than minority parties achieving a fair measure of representation, we have had in fact in recent years the tail well and truly wagging the dog – has highlighted the fact that MMP can inflict even more corrupt anti-democratic outcomes on the country. As African American writer Thomas Sowell points out, minorities can bully majority governments  and eventually it can be their agenda that dominates, when each major party woos a minority one in order to form a government.

We have already seen this happening with the radicalised, un-representative Maori Party which does not even speak for majority Maori. Gaining less than 3% of the votes in the last election, it has succeeded, with the compliance of the National Party, in being highly instrumental in supporting activist iwis’ manipulative politicising.  Taxpayers willing to settle genuine grievances are perturbed that what now amount to many, accumulatively, billions of dollars have been handed over to tribal interests only in recent decades.

Moreover the economy is weakened by the revisiting and continual payout (in an increasing number of cases) of utterly spurious compensation for un-proven claims. Some previously settled by the National Party under Jim Bolger’s leadership,  as well as recent settlements made under Key’s overseeing, rely upon unfounded assertions, the misrepresentation of history, and straight-out untruths. Moreover, it is ominous and highly significant that in any discussion of how to make substantial savings, neither the National nor Labour Party has shown any genuine inclination to put a stop to what are now essentially rorts against majority New Zealanders – both  non-Maori and including majority (part-)Maori – as all are now part-only Maori.

The lesson we should have learnt ?  It is that  to vote for a party, to give any of our political parties an actual party vote is,  now equivalent to a vote against a democracy.

The smartest political move of all now, and the way to our future, is to refuse to support the continuation of the gross abuse of power by our political parties which has exponentially grown in recent years.

What politicians most want is the party vote.

Those who most want the party vote are those for whom nobody has voted - those List members who are not answerable to any New Zealanders – other than their party boss.

If one holds to the belief that in a true democracy nobody should be in Parliament without first presenting themselves for scrutiny by the voting public, then one cannot in conscience give a party vote.

New Zealanders are faced with a conundrum. Most certainly do not trust either of the major parties, and will certainly no longer back First Past the Post – FPP. They will stick with MMP partly to punish the major parties. But they are also well aware that the system is equally flawed and can deliver even less democratic outcomes.

What the country most wants is what politicians least want – that New Zealanders themselves should be able to make the decisions regarding the directions in which they want the country to go. They want to prevent bad law – and to throw out unaccountable politicians.

Other posts and articles on this site show how eminently achievable this is – through our Claiming Back New Zealand – 100 Days initiative – www.100days.co.nz .  Simplicity itself, it was the method that the most successful democracy in the world finally decided upon  – that of Switzerland, repudiating any tops-down decisions by government, and ensuring that the Swiss people themselves have complete control over their way of life.

Their solution was not only eminently simple and workable – it has overseen Switzerland becoming the most successful democracy in the world. And given the eventual tipping point – when this country has become thoroughly disillusioned with our vote-buying political parties and their impositions on the public at large, it will come in this country.

This movement is already well underway. The sooner you join us to help it forward, the sooner will come its success.

In this respect, don’t miss the latest article we have added  – by expat New Zealander, Jeff McIntyre, an excellent analysis by a well experienced political commentator of the status quo in this country – and of how essential and how easily, fundamentally, it will be,  to reclaim this country.  Its title:

 The most significant proposed change to New Zealand’s electoral laws

Preventing bad law and throwing out unaccountable politicians.

*

©  Amy Brooke – for 100 Days – Claiming back New Zealand

Probably no rational person in New Zealand doubted that South Canterbury Finance owner Allan Hubbard was one of New Zealand’s truly decent people – the kind we’d like to have seen accept a knighthood  - sadly now part of an honours system thoroughly brought into disrepute, lavished on so many individuals for what many New Zealanders quite rightly regard as entirely the wrong reasons.

But that’s politics, isn’t it – an apparently ultimately corrupted business where yes, in the age-old way of the world, money, power and influence does the talking – on both the far Right and the far Left side of the political spectrum.

Allan Hubbard had helped so very many people that the palpable anger against the government bureaucracy felt by those who knew him very well down south was a tribute to a battler from a poor and honourable working-class background. He came from the days in which so many  (before the hands-out mentality of doubtful “entitlements”)  determined to work their way out of poverty and took pride in doing so to provide for their families. As did my own father, a brilliant man, fine teacher and eventual Headmaster who achieved his degree in History and Political Science at Canterbury University – (fortunate enough to attend the lectures of the world-renowned philosopher, Karl Popper) –  an exceptional athlete and commentator who gifted a great deal of his own time to community affairs. He would have been honoured to regard Hubbard as a friend.

I mention this because the comparison came to my mind when looking at a photo of Allan Hubbard. They were the same kind of people, honourable and honest men who commanded the respect men once did before turning into today’s  50 and 60-year-olds, still gyrating to infantilised pop music and becoming so brainwashed, so intimidated by the creeping State with its links to the growth of antagonistic feminism and gay “rights”. Both the latter fundamentally seek to undermine and demoralise parents who once would have stood up  throughout the country, at community level – to fight for the values that held our communities together.

 Few would doubt that Allan Hubbard exhibited these values in the way he lived his life. Nor would they have doubted my father, who not for a moment hesitated to take on extra work during the school holidays, not only to be of service to his fellow teachers, but at whatever menial holiday jobs he could find, whether working on the wharf, the TAB, or at various food-processing factories in Christchurch – while at the same time providing the reading for Christchurch artist Ernest Leeming’s memorable walk-through depiction of Dante’s Inferno at the 1950 Christchurch Centennial Celebrations.(Incidentally, I’m reminded here by my older brother, Dermot, that this wonderful pageant of art was even more of a superb achievement,  as it was pulled together at the last minute. What had originally been planned was a depiction of the history of Kaiapoi and Te Rauparaha’s invasion of the South  – until Ngai Tahu applied last-minute political pressure. How very familiar…)

John Bernard Mora was also one the three-only New Zealanders who  represented this country at what must have been the centennial featuring of the Commonwealth radio quiz contest. (I was thrilled to find this same brother recalls one of the tricky questions he answered correctly…What was “the tangle o’ the Isles’? ) !  Politically aware, he stood for the Labour Party to fight against the Communist takeover of the Lyttelton waterfront. In later years, he no longer supported the party that once stood for genuine reform for workers and families, regarding with dismay its takeover by the far Left and academic Socialists with their Marxist agenda. But above all he was of his time, a family man with a family and nine children to provide for.

It is a fine face, the one that reminded me of my father looking back at the world in a last year’s blog by commentator Bernard Hickey. The caption beside it is pitiable. Mr Hubbard is quoted as saying: “I think if Mr Key,  who knows me, was in New Zealand, he wouldn’t have done that.” It was the statement of a thoroughly honest and bewildered man, trusting to the best of individuals – which unfortunately, can’t always be done. The “that” to which Allan Hubbard was referring was the extraordinary way in which charges were laid against him when his affairs were so precipitately put into Statutory Management to be investigated by the Serious Fraud Office on Minister Simon Power’s authority.

The vigorous defence mounted by Allan Hubbard’s supporters from the beginning makes fascinating reading, some of its key points compelling – as laid out in the discussion forum of Shareinvestor.co.nz.

“On the afternoon of Sunday, 20th June 2010, the Cabinet of the New Zealand Government sat in on an extraordinary meeting and approved the placing of Aorangi Securities Ltd and Allan and Jean Hubbard into Statutory Management and the appointment of the Serious Fraud Office to investigate each entity for fraud. As the report was only available Friday, there was therefore little time for the Government to consider before Sunday’s meeting…http://www.shareinvestorforum.com/index.php

“Whether an arrest or detention is arbitrary turns on the nature and extent of any departure from the substantive and procedural standards involved. An arrest or detention is arbitrary if it is capricious, unreasoned, without reasonable cause; if it is made without reference to an adequate determining principle or without following proper procedures.”The statutory management decision has effectively made Mr and Mrs Hubbard prisoners of government appointed officials. Since the date of statutory management all their personal mail is opened by the statutory managers and access to their private bank accounts has been forbidden. They have lived under these conditions for the past eight months. They are an elderly couple aged in their 80s.”
”These conditions were set upon them without an opportunity to first reply to concerns that the Securities Commission had raised in their investigation report…”

 “While we respect the integrity of Adam Feeley and the SFO, we have completely lost any faith in the integrity of Justice Minister Simon Power, and we have lost faith in the integrity of the justice system due to the growing number of conflict(s) of interest present in this situation, which Minister Power has completely ignored, and appears to be in denial about.”

These are strong words, and many New Zealanders would agree with them.  One would not have to be elderly to be confused, as Allan Hubbard was when he was descended upon…“‘I was going to Dunedin for Queen’s Birthday weekend to speak at the 105th anniversary of Knox Church and I was rung on the way down about 4 p.m. by a lawyer in Christchurch telling me they’d be coming at 9 p.m. on the Tuesday morning… they wouldn’t be put off.  I was tied up all weekend. I just came back in time to go to the office and then they demanded all these things. If I’d had time to prepare for them I could have located them all and made sure it was Kosher’ he said. …“ They’ve assumed (there were no documents… But they didn’t tell me which ones they wanted….”

Few New Zealanders believe that Hubbard was really given the chance that he deserved to fairly answer the accusations directed at him, with dishonesty obviously implied, by the extraordinary way in which the investigation into South Canterbury Finance was launched against him. Many have been unhappy at the links to the Botherway brothers. And the Allan Hubbard supporters group has raised issues troubling many;

“We are concerned with why Graeme McGlinn, a director of Grant Thornton Statutory Managers co-authored a report for the Securities Commission, recommending statutory management for Aorangi Securities Ltd prior to the 20th June, when he has since been appointed as one of the statutory managers, and is now in the process of liquidating Allan’s various business entities without consulting with Allan or any of the investors.

“This is a clear and obvious conflict of interest, given that Grant Thornton had the potential to gain financially by recommending statutory management in the first place, and has been allowed to commence liquidation without any consultation whatsoever with the investors.

”We hold Simon Power completely responsible for allowing this conflict to occur, and demand to know who made the decision to appoint Grant Thornton under these circumstances, and why.”

Reasonable questions? Back to that photo of a shocked and decent man, saying, “I think if Mr Key, who knows me, was in New Zealand, he wouldn’t have done that,” a man not calling for a favour from his mates  – which has been one of the characteristics we have seen so gravely undermining peoples’ belief in the integrity of the supposedly free market system, but a man who was publicly humiliated without there being  a decent chance to defend himself. The words of the Hubbard supporters are simply undeniable… “That this unnecessary and inhuman tribulation has been inflicted upon someone who has clearly devoted his life to the betterment of New Zealand, a person who lives a modest life, has given over $200 million to New Zealand charities, has assisted 250 young farmers on to dairy farms with interest free loans, established a charitable trust for single income families in South Canterbury so their children can attend University or other Tertiary education is indefensible.”

They add that Prime Minister John Key was completely wrong in suggesting that Allan Hubbard was “completely responsible for ‘bankrupting” South Canterbury Finance” and such a comment was, frankly, defamatory.

Prime Minister Key’s reaction to Alan Hubbard’s faith in him? According to an NBR report, Key told a pre-Cabinet news conference that he knew of and supported the decision by Power to appoint statutory managers. “I was aware of the decision they made and I support the decision being made,” he added.

The facts? We may now never know all, with so much obfuscation including, if  not indeed particularly at government level,  claim and counter-claim being levelled. But some at least are undeniable.

 Allan Hubbard was a thoroughly decent, elderly and very ill man. Those who knew him best considered him utterly incapable of deceit or dishonesty.

None of this was apparently taken into account in the onslaught mounted against him -  in considerable contrast to the way in which various highflying corporate crooks have been investigated. Due recognition was never given to the fact that, heading towards his 90s, he was on dialysis, and although he was obviously extraordinarily capable, both physically and mentally, renal dialysis is a keep-alive system which cannot duplicate the function of the kidneys. Toxins still build up in the body, causing fatigue and possibly, even, particularly if linked to necessary medication, some degree of mental confusion peaking before the next dialysis session.

This would suggest that in view of Mr Hubbard’s reputation for integrity and generosity it would have been far better for him to have been treated considerably more respectfully, patiently, and in turn, generously. The way he was treated by Simon Power, his officials, and the Serious Fraud Office was exactly the opposite. This has not passed the notice of New Zealanders.

Fast forward to recent days – and the hands-off treatment given to the very head of the Serious Fraud Office, boss Adam Feeley, who has been extraordinarily generously treated for, according to The Herald, using copies of the Hubbard biography as booby prizes last December. Mr Feeley now disputes this, claiming his actions were “a genuine prizegiving to reward good performance.” He isn’t going to get many takers for his version of a grossly insensitive action. Moreover, many New Zealanders with arguably a far more rigorous understanding of honest and honourable behaviour,  will have been more than surprised at how leniently Mr Feeley has been treated, following his boastful promise to appropriate from Bridgecorp ownership an expensive wine that was not his – to celebrate. In his own cocky words:

“ “In light of the Bridgecorp charges being laid, there is a bottle of Gosset champagne [which] needs to leave the confines of my fridge at home and be drunk by those involved with the case,” Mr Feeley said in the email, dated May 19 last year.

” ‘ The relevance of which is that it previously resided in Rod Petricevic’s office – and I’ll decline to explain how it end [sic] up with me. Hopefully you can all make it to celebrate.’”

Are we really so very surprised that Mr Feeley has been treated so leniently? As reported by Herald columnist Fran O’Sullivan: “…we now know, courtesy of State Services Commission (SSC) boss Iain Rennie, that toasting the Bridgecorp fraud prosecution with a bottle of the directors’ Gosset champagne is not a sacking offence as far as he is concerned. Neither was the decision to hand out a biography of the late Allan Hubbard at the SFO’s Christmas party, even though the failed Timaru financier was still under investigation at that time.

“Feeley’s actions were merely ‘ill-advised’ and showed a ‘lack of judgment’. But, said Rennie, the SFO’s performance had improved under Feeley’s leadership.The SSC boss would talk to him about the standards he expected of government chief executives.”

Fundamentally, Rennie has failed to address the real issue, and there will be many who regard his response as totally wet. As O’Sullivan points out, “The police and criminal bar have raised valid concerns that Feeley’s antics have contaminated the SFO’s integrity – particularly its reputation for unbiased judgment.”

Indeed. To get back to questions of basic honesty, the wine that Feeley helped himself to wasn’t his. So in the minds of many,  not to put too fine a point on it,  he essentially stole it – it belonged to the Bridgecorp directors. And still in law, the presumption of innocence is supposed to exist until disproven. If we were implementing the successful American policy of zero tolerance attitude to crime, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, Adam Feeley, might well have been charged with theft. Some might contrast the leniency with which has actions have been treated to that of the young man who, a little while ago and late one evening, helped himself on the way home to some pies he came across which had been tossed out into a skip in Nelson – reject pies. He was promptly charged by the police with theft…Sanity prevailed when a judge suggested that the police might like to rethink having charged him. But the very fact of the laying of the charge did not locally increase the respect in which our police are held – just as the withholding of laying charges or leniency of treatment granted to high-profile individuals in other circumstances has exactly the same outcome.

Given that many have become dismayed at the thought that there is now  a far too casual attitude towards “nicking things” in our community, it can be argued that what Adam Feeley did was a disgrace, that there was a principle at stake, and that the neglect of this principle, especially in this case, could be regarded as making him unfit for office. It would be interesting to have seen readers polled on what they thought about the CEO of the Serious Fraud Office helping himself to someone else’s wine, and boasting about it.

Autre temp, autre moeurs  – but are we the better for it?

New Zealand Law Society president Jonathan Temm reportedly said: “It’s a $70 bottle of champagne. It’s not a legal issue. It’s not a story.”  However, many New Zealanders, aware of what principles are, might be tempted to regard such a reaction as an indictment on the Law Society. Temm is quite wrong – it is indeed a story.

And from our very slick Prime Minister who “did not believe drinking Bridgecorp champagne was a ‘major issue’.

“ ‘It’s probably a little bit unfortunate. But as Bill English said, they’ve been working through a lot and it’s probably a boss trying to reward his staff.’ ” Full marks to the PM  for glibness – and for adroitly dumping Bill English into the equation. Did the media check with English to see if he had indeed produced such a shallow rationale for an unacceptable action?

“Key said he did not know all the details but it sounded as if the wine had been left behind.

” ‘I don’t think anyone’s claiming he stole it … If they had stolen it that would have been a different issue.’”

Really? Perhaps just an only too typical Key response, neatly evasive. But is it a different issue? What name have we traditionally given to the act of taking someone else’s property, without permission?

One single expensive bottle of champagne – (although its price is irrelevant, the principle isn’t) -  transferred into the fridge of the CEO Of the Serious Fraud Office – and boasted about?

Those from an other, arguably more principled age,  might well have called it just that – theft. They would have argued that a principle is a principle, regardless of rank or social status. The Romans would have had no doubt at all about the public perception of such an issue. Caesar, in repudiating his wife Pompeia, made the point that it was not because of a transgression – she was innocent – but because in the eyes of the public “Caesar’s wife must be above reproach.”

So should the Serious Fraud Office – though it, too, has also not always been so in the past.

And it would have been very interesting to see readers polled on what they thought about the Head of the Serious Fraud Office helping himself to someone else’s wine. In the verdict of one commentator it was, above all, in poor taste.

 I don’t believe that Allan Hubbard would ever have done this…The irony will not escape readers.

© Amy Brooke

]]> http://100daystodemocracy.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/the-saint-the-slick-and-the-smarmy/feed/ 0 amyjbrooke http://100daystodemocracy.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/the-rising-tide-yes-of-political-damage/ http://100daystodemocracy.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/the-rising-tide-yes-of-political-damage/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:13:16 +0000 Amy Brooke http://100daystodemocracy.wordpress.com/?p=420 ]]> Politicians damaging the country…

In evaluating the present politically-promoted scenario of threatening, man-made global warming, heavily backed by well-funded interest groups, and now a useful opportunity for government taxation and control, we are seeing little reference to the following – a small-only selection of examples of the natural variations in climate change that are on record as far back as  6 AD – and very probably earlier.

More recently:

1778: “remarkable disappearance of ice at high northern latitudes” reported

1809: Thomas Jefferson Reveals That Snow Is (Nearly) A Thing Of The Past

1853: Northwest Passage – Open Water Found In The Arctic Basin – In May

1872: 140 Degrees Reported During Australia Heat Wave

1950: Scientists Say Earth Warming And Glaciers Melting

1952: Another Severe Drought In Australia

1952: Alaska is really getting warmer

1970: Arctic Has Most Ice In Over 60 Years

1970: Global Cooling – “Will Igloos Be The Homes of The Future?”

1972″ There’s A New Ice Age Coming!

1974 : Another Ice Age? – Climatologists Blamed US/Pakistan Flooding On Global Cooling

1974: CIA Determines Moscow Drought And Midwest Floods Result of Global Cooling

1975: National Academy Of Sciences Warned Of A Coming Ice Age

1975: Climate Modelers Ponder Return To An Ice Age

1975 : A New Ice Age Dawning?

1976: CIA Experts Predict Political & Economic Upheavals From Global Cooling Over Next 40 Years 

There are always three things to remember when the long-suffering people of a country are told yet again that the government  (central or local)  has no choice but to regulate and tax them for their own good.

 Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for the South East of England, has published several books arguing for electoral reform. From his own experience he reminds us that “the desire to regulate is encrypted deep in the Eurocrats DNA”.

 It is encrypted no less deep in the DNA of our own central government, and local government and its bureaucracy.

Think management. Think power. Think of the need for management not to leave things alone but to “justify” an often totally undeserved salary – given the Peter principle: – “In a hierarchy,  every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence” – at which stage individuals are capable of causing the greatest harm.

Think of the need to be doing something, to be regarded as important, as essential to the running of a company, a  country, a bureaucracy, a political party. One must be seen to be involved in issues of importance where one’s superior gifts and insights are vital, for the company, the local council, the government to hold the right course ahead.

The catch, as always, as historian Barbara Tuchman reminds us  – a reminder that we should never forget-  is that: “Governments get most issues wrong”.

We need to say that again: “Governments get most issues wrong.”

 Local governments? Companies? Managers? Politicians?   Arguably they get very many issues wrong. And this fact is never without its consequences. Only when the decision-making is open to public scrutiny, to the input of individuals who are often far better informed, more experienced in the areas under scrutiny, even more intelligent or far less wedded to ideological theorizing, can a company, a local government, or even a country be regarded as operating at its optimum level of efficiency – particularly with regard to healthy democratic outcomes.

It is a very long time since New Zealanders had any real say in the directions in which this country has been heading, some of them demonstrably quite wrong – as in the shockingly flawed, unsustainable man-made global warming cult theory. Why it has achieved  the mileage it has can be explained in a second of Daniel Hannan’s reminders; that of the manipulative “precautionary principle” which, octopus-like, is enveloping so much of our day–to-day activities. It is presented by some who well know that the man-made global warming theory is an excuse to fall into line behind the party leaders, “just in case”. It is in fact the perfect copout for the Pontius Pilate attitude which washes its hands of integrity and truth in decision-making.

At the level of irritating and stultifying interference in everybody’s affairs, our power-loving bureaucracies’ constant and expanding invocation of the precautionary principle dominates the resource consent procedure causing so much damage in economic terms to this country as a whole – let alone to individuals – with increasing compliance costs, the need for costly litigation, for legal support to defend their positions against council and government edicts.  At the level of sheer banality, the precautionary principle forbids children to climb trees; to play with conkers; to access a playground under teacher guidance  unless “a risk assessment procedure” has first been carried out); removes trees with  poisonous berries; and plans to remove trees alongside main highways in case a drunken driver hits them – when more determinedly removing the drunken driver from our roads would be a far more logical solution.

In the words of a highly intelligent and experienced political and academic commentator:  “You’re right about these high flyers being rigid thinkers with programmed minds… heavily stereotyped opinions which prevent {name deleted}  from thinking originally or objectively about anything. He’s really out of touch with what’s happening at street level. A lot of judges and politicians – who make the decisions that govern our lives – are of this type.”

Although INVESTIGATE and the National Business Review occupy their own valuable niches, New Zealand is particularly badly off in that we have so little of the intelligent well-informed opposition to the wrong directions and rigid theorizing that we find in excellent overseas publications even from just across the Tasman,  such as Quadrant and  the Australian News Weekly  http://www.newsweekly.com.au/  with its broad-ranging, up-todate, insightful commentary on economic, sociopolitical Pacific and world affairs  simply not available in this country.

Most thinking New Zealanders have come to realize this. Many have already looked back and seen the very foolish, even disastrous managerial and political decisions which have cost us so much in recent years. Yet nothing is in place in this country which has any chance at all of reversing the imbalance caused by the power monopoly of whatever political hierarchy is imposing its hands-down edicts from the top. New Zealand is not by any means the only country which has suffered from poor government decision-making aided by the undue influence of powerful and wealthy individuals who too often, in the way of the world, have preferential access to our government hierarchy.

 Simply dreaming up new systems of voting possibilities such as STV will do nothing what ever to undo the ongoing damage done to the country by political party systems which swallow up and control their membership. The recent voting record of our major parties’ MPs on issues where they simply did not carry the country with them, but voted in opposition to those who elected them and whom they supposedly represent – such as on the pernicious anti-smacking legislation – and on the damaging Emissions Trading Scheme, the Marine and Coastal Area bills – has conclusively demonstrated that our Parliament is now antagonistic to the reality of democracy. Both Labour and National MPs (and this by no means excludes the minor party MPs) no longer act as individuals with their consciences and electorates to answer to, but fall into line, for self advantage, for promotion, to retain their perks and to remain “in” with the party hierarchy. When the latter is dominated by underinformed, basically historically and philosophically ignorant but highly ambitious  and autocratic leaders bent on self-advantage,  or wedded to ideologies basically antipathetic to democracy – such as socialism, Marxism, left-wing union domination – or, from the other side of the spectrum – arguing for extremist right-wing policies favouring corporate advantage and market monopoly, then a democracy is terminally ill.

The only solution is to abolish the dominance that party politics has over the country at large. Before the last election, for example, National as much as Labour – if not even more – over-controlled its candidates from party headquarters. Candidates were forbidden to write their own speeches – but had poorly written diktats foisted off on them by the party executive.  Some of the most powerful ministers within the National Party at present, pushing through legislation with no mandate at all from New Zealanders at large, were not subjected to any scrutiny by an electorate, but chosen because the determined John Key, ignoring the National Party’s individual electorates’ right to meet and to rank the list candidates in order of preference – were told to forget it. Key had already chosen the first 50 – those he could no doubt count on to recall in future that they owed their positions in Parliament to him – certainly not to the country at large. Nobody in fact voted for these individuals – the very antithesis of a democratic system. But their powerful positions have seen them virtually dictating policy to the country, and dominating its directions within their own sphere of influence – if not further abroad.

There is only one way in fact to reclaim the country as a democracy, and it is entirely possible for this to be brought about within 2 to 3 parliamentary terms – achievable through our 100 Days – Claiming Back Democracy www.100days.co.nz movement. Like all brilliant concepts it is essentially simple, uncomplicated and achievable – which makes it possible for New Zealanders themselves to decide their own directions, irrespective of the personal ambitions of politicians for promotion within the party – or for those with a longer term view  – on the world stage. Switzerland, the most successful democracy in the world, finally decided upon this ultimate weapon of political control of politicians by the country at large. It is no coincidence that this masterstroke of judgment has been the predominant reason why Switzerland is the most successful and flourishing democracy in the world.  A highly influential, pro-democracy Australian  group now supports our conclusion that it is the only really practical way to control politicians.

Undoubtedly it is a movement whose time has come, and this is well illustrated by examining the voting record and/or the preferred options of our political parties as shown in the latest INVESTIGATE (HIS/HERS) October, 2011.

Looking at our political parties’ records on issues that affect us all, and noting the directions in which they wish to take us, it would be productive to recall:

Firstly, Daniel Hannan’s reminder that the desire to regulate is encoded deep in the political bureaucracies DNA;

Secondly, the precautionary principle “which holds that because something might be dangerous we shouldn’t permit it until it has been shown to be safe. ( Its absurdity is illustrated by the example he gives, that at the beginning of the 19th century it was widely believed that the noise of passing trains would cause pregnant women to miscarry. Had the precautionary principle been applied, with rail operators of the day unable to prove that they would not cause miscarriages, then “we would never have laid an inch of track.”)

The third reminder is the most important one of all, and has resounded down through the centuries. We should ask ourselves  – Cui bono?  – whose interests do these directions, or does this promoted legislation, serve? Large pharmaceutical companies, for example, can openly lobby for an opportunity to put their smaller rivals out of business. Big corporations can persuade MPs to legislate in their favour – or at least to refrain from legislating to disadvantage them. I recall a reported meeting the CEO of one of our largest companies had with a National Party Prime Minister immediately prior to her presiding over a cabinet meeting in connection with a planned opening up of the company to competition – from which she emerged having apparently changed her mind.

Cui bono? In whose interest…?

Political parties’ proposed legislation is always presented, of course, for the victims’  i.e. the citizens of a country’s, own good. In recent years the remarkably near-fascist Green Party (check out the list of freedoms the Greens oppose New Zealanders retaining in the latest INVESTIGATE  (HIS/HER) analysis presented  by Family First NZ. It makes productive reading, bringing home the fact the Green Party  has the lowest of all ratings when it comes to questions that depend upon the right of New Zealanders to over-rule an autocratic government by exercising their democratic right to binding citizens initiated referenda.

Similarly, the Greens actually oppose the fundamental notion that parents have the prime responsibility for their children – not the government – an ominous stance given the fact that deeply worrying changes to the way the family is regarded in law have been made by extending the State’s authority over children, and liberalizing the description of families far beyond the traditional acceptance of a mother, father and child/children.  Parents also now only have ‘day to day care’ rather than custody over the children, with children’s “rights” now being inappropriately aggrandized. Nor do the Greens support the move to introduce legislation to decriminalize parents, although the latter’s authority over their children has been weakened by our leader-dominated MPs attacking parents’ authority over their children – and the respect in which parents are held. The evidence in fact points to the Greens, for all their liberal façade, being the most anti-individual, pro-big government of all the political parties.

I recently received an e-mail from the internationally highly respected geologist Dr Gerrit van der Lingen with his updated essay on supposed sea level rise – now able to be accessed on our Articles page.

Dr van der Lingen has forwarded the section on the Netherlands to the Dutch Government, which has “received advice on the to-be-expected sea-level rise from a committee based on extreme, computer-based projections. This committee advised that the government should spent 2 billion euro annually for many years for protection against this extreme sea-level rise, such as raising the dikes.  I received a kind letter of acknowledgement from the Prime Minister. I hope my analysis can help them to save such unnecessary expenditure.”

He rightly adds that politicians should read this. “Nick Smith comes to mind, of course, but I doubt that he is open to good information. I suspect that he is well aware that man-made global warming is a big con, but as a politician he sees advantages in pushing the green wheelbarrow.”

Nick Smith must answer for himself, but any defence of his position will be taken with more than a grain of salt by very many well-informed New Zealanders who initially thought that politicians had simply not done enough reading, neither following the debates nor scrutinizing the evidence and analyzing its facts. Only gradually have they come to the conclusion that many politicians from both Labour and National already well knew that the scientific evidence, not withstanding all the propaganda, does not support the anthroprogenic cult theory. Yet not one of these MPs opposed the Emissions Trading Scheme on the basis that any recent warming period has been part of an entirely natural cyclical phenomenon and that this recent one has ended. It’s worth here checking out periods of global warming balanced with global cooling.

 http://www.c3headlines.com/bad-stuff-happens.html

The website above should be of particular interest to politicians who have been overquick to fall into line cheerleading for their party leaders’ endorsement of the deeply flawed, it’s-all-our-fault doomsday scenario of global warming. So, too, should be the headlines below – already highlighted at the top of this article and chosen from hundreds highlighting the fact that warming and cooling periods can be recorded by geologists – who have the advantage of over computer modelers, in that they deal with scientific facts.

What’s in it for the party leader – apart from the expanded ability to raise taxes and further assist the process whereby the State continues to expand its power and control over people’s lives? This is a question overdue to be asked when New Zealanders are having their competitive advantage with other countries even further eroded, with punishing financial consequences. Can we afford to ignore the evidence? If not, why are we buying into this massive con?

To recap:

1778: “remarkable disappearance of ice at high northern latitudes” reported

1809: Thomas Jefferson Reveals That Snow Is (Nearly) A Thing Of The Past

1853: Northwest Passage – Open Water Found In The Arctic Basin – In May

1872: 140 Degrees Reported During Australia Heat Wave

1950: Scientists Say Earth Warming And Glaciers Melting

1952: Another Severe Drought In Australia

1952: Alaska is really getting warmer

1970: Arctic Has Most Ice In Over 60 Years

1970: Global Cooling – “Will Igloos Be The Homes of The Future?”

1972″ There’s A New Ice Age Coming!

1974 : Another Ice Age? – Climatologists Blamed US/Pakistan Flooding On Global Cooling

1974: CIA Determines Moscow Drought And Midwest Floods Result of Global Cooling

1975: National Academy Of Sciences Warned Of A Coming Ice Age

1975: Climate Modelers Ponder Return To An Ice Age

1975 : A New Ice Age Dawning?

1976: CIA Experts Predict Political & Economic Upheavals From Global Cooling Over Next 40 Years

Contrary to the highly politicized, and, for, some highly profitable promotion of the recent past round of mild global warming as signaling a catastrophic period ahead, and supposedly necessitating the control of carbon dioxide emissions, this recent short period of warming is now finished – and according to any decent scientific analysis, has been unable to be sheeted home to the minor atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide, as the culprit. The records show conclusively that any carbon dioxide rise actually follows global warming,  rather than contributing to it.

So what exactly is going on as far as our politicians are concerned?  To answer this question we must go back to Daniel Hannan – Cui bono? To whose advantage has been to promote this theory? Al Gore’s self-serving and alarmist scenario has contributed to the now considerable wealth of his multibillion dollar  company involved in trading carbon credits – as absurd a concept as any dreamt up inside the corrupt US high finance finance sector these recent years.  In this respect, “INSIDE JOB”, the unmissable DVD record of the high-flying US companies paying exorbitant bonuses to their chief executives, many demonstrably corrupt  – Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stears etc. details what has been well described as “A Crime Story like no other in history”, the ongoing corruption of the money markets, their bankers, investors and traders costing tens of millions of people their homes, their jobs, their savings – their future – with the full compliance of the international credit rating agencies now rating us… Plus ça change…

Closer to home, why would National Party leader John Key, who openly disagreed with the anthroprogenic global warming theorising before he became party leader, then decide to support it? Why have National Party MPs – (as with no doubt some Labour MPs – the Greens probably too brainwashed on this topic to be even considered) –   at least half of whom are known to actually disbelieve what has now taken on the impetus of a well-funded religious cult, of, supposedly, Earth-threatening proportions equal to the bubonic plague,  not publicly stood up and said that they think the whole theory is a rort?

Why have we not heard from senior National ministers such as Tim Groser and Maurice Williamson, reportedly dismissive of this pseudo-scientific scenario? As another experienced observer points out , if National really believed the propaganda our major parties have been advancing in their end-of-the-world is nigh scenario, with inexorably rising tides and temperatures, why would they have abandoned their original proposals to involve the farming community in controlling animal emissions? Why not the planning for worst-case scenarios, the relocation of coastal housing, the rerouting of highways inland? Where bureaucrats in individual councils such as Gosford, a coastal town in NSW, are attempting to place notifications regarding projected sea level rises of up to a metre,  a coastal resident’s groups is now exploring the possibilities of a class action against the council.

This democratically healthy sign outlines the possibilities open to New Zealanders themselves.

The riddle of why MPs will not stand up to party leaders is not hard to solve – either gullibility, the inability to think independently, or the wish to be “a party man”  (by no means unlinked to self-advantage)  have come to rule the day. But the question of why our present Prime Minister has so changed his stance on this issue may become clearer, when we consider how nowadays a country’s political leader may begin to look further ahead to life after Parliament; to become ambitious to be part of the international circuit; a secure member of the international community; to become acceptable to the major powers with a view to becoming a player on the world stage, part of the powerful celebrity circuit meeting with international figures and on hello-again terms with royalty. Endorsing the scenario presented by countries like the United States, under its present problematic leader Barak Obama, with his endorsement of AGW, also becomes important.  Even more so, with the job opportunities offering, is the need to be viewed well by the figureheads of the United Nations, for all its anti-the West directions.

For example, what was the purpose of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, head of this basically antipathetic organization, in recently visiting New Zealand?  (We should recall that its Commission on Human Rights comes under repeated criticism for its unwillingness to address genuine human rights concerns, as well as the composition of its membership,  member countries themselves having poor, even disgraceful records, including countries worst of all in this respect, whose representatives have been elected to chair the commission.)

Here recently in New Zealand with the President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, Ban Ki-Moon joined him in quite wrongly claiming that is “climate change” ( he meant man-made global warming – the wording has been carefully adjusted) which poses the most serious threat to the livelihoods, security, and survival of our Pacific countries. Both were pushing for “urgent international action to reduce emissions of the harmful greenhouse gases” underlying “the need to make climate change adaptation funding available…”

According to the Washington Times – EDITORIAL: Pacific islands not sinking from global warming – a “New study debunks Al Gore’s hysterical fairy tale: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/11/pacific-islands-not-sinking-from-global-warming/  -  “the Hockey Stick has been thoroughly debunked, the Himalayas still have snow and the polar bears are alive and well. As just about every tenet in the Church of Global Warming has been debunked, it’s time for the movement’s high priest, Mr. Gore, to offer a refund to those from his flock who bought his work of fiction.

Ban Ki-Moon has bought it, too. So has John Key, Nick Smith. So has Julia Gillard? Or have they? Cui bono? When the scientific facts are against them, the answer has to be somehow, either that they simply have not bothered to analyze the evidence, or some particular benefit must accrue to them must accrue to them in pushing this barrow?

To take one example: In New Zealand alone, looking for what should be the very obvious effects of anthropogenic global warming, we can instance the Waikato Basin where there has been measurably no more rain, no more storms,  no perceptible increase in warming for 107 years. Why did the media not tell Ban Ki-Moon this – and ask them why he had not bought himself up to date with facts? Or if he had, why was he peddling the nonsense he was promoting?

It is not as if we do not have  real, horrific human rights abuses about which he, John Key, Phil Goff, Julia Gillard and other world leaders remain remarkably quiet, including the oppression and violation of women, still, worldwide, and close to home, among our major trading partners, communist China’s  brutal treatment of dissidents – from which our government averts its eyes – (and, worryingly, fromwhat China  is up to in the Pacific…)  because it is anxious not to offend this increasingly aggressive giant, important to us as a trading partner.

New Zealanders have a problem. We have in our small country highly activist and energetic subversive groups basically seeking to overthrow democracy, and to work for self advantage.

Correspondingly,  we have a mainstream media of apparently largely ignorant, often too busy, day-to-day, under-educated journalists recording the news of the day without making any attempt to look behind its superficialities. We have a majority of opinionated columnists shooting from the lip, as it were, and doing very little research into the issues which affect us all. But without much needed strategic analysis of the directions in which we are being pushed, how much chance is there of the country actually surviving the attacks we are under?

New Zealand in fact is at war… but sleepwalking into it. Yet, as Arnold Toynbee reminded us: “Every age has its own crisis and challenges which must be met – otherwise society collapses.”

It would be a very foolish individual who would now claim that we have no current crisis – or that are we not being faced with the disintegration of our society, very much assisted by the political decisions autocratically imposed on this – by no means by the AGW claim alone.. The evidence in fact points in the opposite direction.

The new article posted on our webpage – www.100days.co.nz by Dr Gerrit van der Lingen – “Luctor et Emergo” –  analyses one of the most important untruths of our day – the claim made by our politicians, by the Secretary General of the United Nations, and by others who should know better. Please feel free to send it on.

© Amy Brooke

Post-script:

“a) Recently, an excellent article was published on sea-level rise in the Auckland region (Hannah et al., 2011). Their Figure 3 is a graph showing the linear sea-level trend from 1898 to 2010 (Figure 22). This trend is 1.5 ± 0.09 mm per year. They write that “The most recent analysis

Figure 22. Linear trend of sea-level rise in the Auckland region, from 1898 to 2010. This trend is 1.5 ± 0.09 mm/yr (uncorrected for any regional vertical land motion). Please note, there is no acceleration. Figure 3 from Hannah et al, 2011.

of the Auckland data (Watson, 2010, Cole, 2010) reveals no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise”. Indeed, their analyses suggest a slight positive acceleration in the early-mid 20th Century followed by a slight negative acceleration in recent years.” [my emphases]. Making a correction for the Global Isostatic Adjustment at the Auckland tide gauge site of +0.30 mm/yr, they obtained a final figure for the sea level trend of 1.8 mm/yr. This result is very similar to global sea level rise, including that of The Netherlands (1.76 mm/yr, see Figure 8). Again, none of these show any acceleration of sea level rise.”

Dr Gerrit van der Lingen

Out where a rugged individualism still exists, away from the metrosexual gushing, the  naivety and what is close to simple sycophancy, reactions to the nowadays only too typical takeover of public occasions was far different – rational, sane, concerned – even angry. It varied, as quoted –“It should have been called the Maori World Cup”…to “ I never saw most of it: I simply switched off in disgust…”… And “overblown, insulting to majority New Zealanders”… “The opening ceremony was ridiculous”…”Outrageous. …

“I’m still waiting for the world to be shown New Zealand’s many-faceted cultural heritage – not the usual presentation of supposed Maori supremacy” … And from one overseas watcher – “I couldn’t see a white face in the opening ceremony…”-  to a PC radio caller who approved of the farce it essentially was, saying that “it wasn’t as ‘colloquial’ as he thought it might be – there were no sheep…” –  seemingly he meant ‘colonial’.  It says it all really.

I missed most of the opening ceremony after watching with some disbelief a Maori woman clad in the usual authentic silver-grey, satin evening gown that apparently was the custom for calling the welcome onto the marae. It reminded me of the equally ‘authentic” meeting place in shades of purple and mauve that from memory,  the politically correct and culturally askew Te Papa, our capital city infotainment museum, presents as a showpiece.

Essentially, what I did see was undoubtedly farcical, an utterly representative, only too typical bowdlerising  and whitewashing of a culture presented as dominant, no doubt unique, but historically ultimately violent, aggressive, egocentric and intolerant.  Far from the typical pretty picture being presented through the Maori side of their inheritance, today’s iwi – (adroitly avoiding recognition of the fact that none of their members are now full-blooded Maori and that many would have as little as 1/16th or 1/32^nd genetic inheritance) – have invented this fanstasy land of a non-existent Aotearoa, far removed from the reality of their pathologically warring forebears.

We can expect from self-serving politicians and the usual media  “experts” the  continual, unduly apologetic and one-sided appraisal of what is apparently and everlastingly owed today to part-Maori New Zealanders. The liberal Left’s contention is that they can never be sufficiently compensated for what was in the end a treaty to impose law, establish property rights and put a stop to the internecine warfare, cannibalism, cruelty, torture, and generally degraded lifestyles so despairingly commented on in the records of the young Marist Father missionaries – let alone in the journal and letters of Charles Darwin and other historic onlookers. But does this excuse our political overlords continually paying Danegeld to the tribes and hapus that dream up more and more utterly untenable claims – not only to the foreshore and seabeds of this country, but to the electromagnetic spectrum, the airwaves, to the waterways and riverbeds, our forests and flora -  in fact to every possible part of New Zealand, both under and above ground, that they can persuade an only too willing, rather than simply gullible government to take seriously? For its proper name is corruption.

Votes, votes, votes. What an unprincipled political party won’t do for votes – has done for votes… But surely it can’t be correct that the present damaging Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Chris Finlayson, is awarding $10 million dollars to Maori interests as compensation for the loss of their “maritime fleet” ? Apparently Finlayson, an unelected MP, endorsed by no electorate, and representing no-one except himself, his leader, and a few of the more extremist Nats, can do what he likes. Certainly, he ridicules opposition and seemingly thinks he is not obliged to answer questions sent to him. Perhaps he shortly intends to compensate Maori for the loss of their pre-colonial air force? After all, the brave nursing student Anna Penn was sacked for challenging her Maori tutor’s claim that the British, on arrival, had thrown the Maori printing presses into the river  – exactly what river was not specified.

Apparently we must take seriously pagan entities called taniwha that lurk near any potential development, protesting at the routing of roads and the building of bridges until their veto is removed by paying a considerable sum to their helpful local iwi.

We are now a laughing stock, a source of bewilderment, even derision to overseas visitors, as I was reminded this week, when describing what nonsense is now being promoted by the Nelson City Elma Turner library.  A sacred water vessel , an ipu tapu wai has been solemnly installed outside the library’s research room. Apparently, “in traditional Maori practice the use of water to purify and restore oneself from a tapu or sacred realm is paramount…After researching whakapapa it is important to return to the state of noa  (safeness) in the existing world.” Apparently Nelson City is very privileged to have been gifted this.

O tempora, o mores. Oh what nonsense.  Leaving aside the soup of bacteria, a doctor remarked  – the result of many dabbling hands… as an utterly incredulous overseas guest enquired – “Does the alarm go off if you take the spirits out of the library?  Or will one get a call from the desk …Have you checked that taniwha out yet?’  Or  -‘ Is this taniwha  overdue ?’

It is not as if by far the majority of those in this country who also share Maori ancestry endorse this bunkum that our politicians and bureaucrats have tapped into, for their own self-advancement. Yet, as this same highly well-qualified and intelligent visitor noted, when a country like New Zealand has pretty significant economic problems, we can’t afford to endorse these potty theories and quite blatantly historically untrue claims for special iwi advantage.

No-one however, appears to have brought this home to Minister Chris Finlayson, so obligingly centering himself as a facilitator for reinvented claims that demand  historically unjustified “compensation”. Labour, National, the Greens all bring to mind that odd little brass  image of a trio of monkeys representing hear-no-evil-see-no-evil-speak-no-evil. Only we can substitute the word truth, instead of evil. Why see what you don’t want to? How very useful…

Is this why we now have the quite shocking situation where one determined and utterly unrepresentative individual, Pita Sharples, the co-leader of a racist party that didn’t even attract 3% of the vote in the last election, has, with the permission of his good mate, the ever-obliging Prime Minister John Key, now managed to inflict on schools a requirement to centre-stage reinvented Maori culture bearing little resemblance to its ancestral roots. What an insult to university graduates in the various disciplines – physics, chemistry, mathematics, languages, etc. to be expected, as priority,  not to teach their subject well to all their students, but “to engage in respectful working relationships with Maori students and their families, showing sincerity and respect towards Maori beliefs, language and culture, recognizing Maori students as Maori and taking responsibility for their own learning and that of the Maori students.”

What an amazing cheek, the intimidation and lack of reality underpinning the requirement (Sharples failed to get it made compulsory) for professionals to be expected to show “sincerity” towards extremist beliefs that belong to an age of far-off primitivism. What a nerve for teachers to be expected to take responsibility for the learning of part-Maori pupils, who, with their parents, should be taking responsibility for their own learning.

This nonsense of blaming the education system, third-rate although it is, for the failure of these pupils and their parents in particular to take on board the basic fact that hard work underpins learning – does nobody any good. There was a considerable outcry when former Auckland Grammar Headmaster John Graham pointed out that Maori pupils at the school didn’t succeed because they were lazy. Sharples’ message needs to be addressed to failing part-Maori in an equivalent to that well-known idiom – to pull up their socks  – rather than to attempt to bully teachers to “meet the learning needs of Maori students.”

The learning needs of “Maori students” are the same as those of all other pupils… (And we should not misuse the word “students” at school level.) To argue that part-Maori can’t do as well as new immigrants such as Chinese, Cambodian, and the children of other ethnic groups who arrive knowing no English, but in two or three years are on top of their subjects and emerge as duxes of their school – is to wilfully ignore the fact that their attitude and that of their parents handicaps them. Either that, or one would be left with the conclusion that after six or more generations of co-settlement they are vastly inferior on account of some Maori genetic inheritance – which is obviously nonsense.  

It is beggars belief that Pita Sharples and his Maori Party cohorts, whose miniscule vote makes it very obvious that they did not receive the  endorsement  of even the majority of part-Maori in New Zealand, feel ti appropriate to pontificate that “to be culturally competent teachers need “ a specific knowledge and understanding of Maori identity, language and culture, and the ability to form relationships with the Maori community.”

There is more of this supremacist nonsense, and it is a shocking indictment (but what is new here?) on the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Teachers Council that they apparently plan to work with, i.e. to impose on teachers, principals, unions and school trustees “to ensure the guidelines are widely used”.

The situation in this country with regard to the centre-staging of all things Maori and the denigrating of the by far greater and arguably far more relevant rich European cultural heritage has become a disgrace.  At a political level, local councils are being pressured to set up Maori wards and Maori community boards that represent nobody, except the tribal cliques that push for these. The nonsense is always advanced that these will serve the interests of Maori. What Maori? Most well-integrated, all part-Maori, with generations of intermarriage, working in the professions, in trades, in industry, or as home-makers are not at all interested in these apartheid-like contrivances for undemocratic centre-staging and advantage. They are always accompanied by requests for more funding, more importance, “special” input into decision-making – as if a part- Maori genetic inheritance confers a wisdom unable to be aspired to by others.

We are all well aware, of course, that the multimillion-dollar settlements bestowed on Maori iwi were meant to be for the advancement of all Maori, particularly disadvantaged Maori – not to be stockpiled in the coffers of tribal executives simply for investment, and to be directed towards only those who would work for tribal interests. It has been a disgraceful situation that this has not occurred – that in the case of the two largest settlement claims alone, that of Ngai Tahu and Tainui, tribal leaders made it quite plain that they had no intention of seeing any money directed towards the poor and disadvantaged of their tribes  - basically regarding them as no-hopers. The extraordinarily generous Sealord deal, for example, handing over so much of our fisheries to tribal Maori was, I recall reading at the time, reportedly arrived at between National Party  Minister Doug Graham  and Ngai Tahu leader Tipene O’Regan over some gin-and-tonics.  Yet Sealord has been heavily criticised for using foreign instead of local workers, and is particularly under fire for not hiring iwi locally.

Who’s surprised? Who is surprised that so many New Zealanders, of both European and Maori ancestry – disgusted by the racial bias in this country which has seen our majority cultural heritage ignored and sidelined by a radicalized, highly activist, minority-only part-Maori – have left this country to get away from it all? Who’s surprised when, in an interesting illustration of the inevitable kickback against the attack on the majority European “colonial” culture, an Internet trader listed the car license number plate “Maori”, attracting thousands of comments “many of them blatantly racist”? It was ironic to note the smooth-tongued Pita Sharples’ lamenting that people “felt they could publish their prejudice without regard of the hurt to others”. Sharples is very good at constantly exhibiting his own prejudices.

Prejudices? What about the blatant discrimination of the Rugby World Cup ceremony ? Apart from a brief showing of a Highland pipe band, there was no indication given to viewers worldwide that this is a predominately now multi-ethnic country, originally basically pacified and settled by those of British extraction. The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (by which scores of local chiefs over what were in many cases numerically very small tribes, more like extended families, in many instances)  yielded  sovereignty over this country to the British Crown, guaranteeing all those under it of whatever race, or gender, or creed the same and equal rights by law.

English, Irish, Scottish, French, Jewish, Italian, German, Polish, Assyrian, Malaysian, India, Dalmatian, Pacific islanders, Chinese and others have all become New Zealanders…a largely Eurocentric majority culture underpinned by Christianity and hosting peoples of all nations. The travesty of the Rugby World Cup’s supposed introduction to New Zealand and its peoples ignored all this – inexcusably so.

It was doubly interesting to get feedback from our overseas guest, a New Zealand expat saddened by what has happened to the country and understandably relieved to be no longer living here. Worryingly, in looking at New Zealand today, now markedly second-rate, with beds parked out in hospital corridors; waiting times of many long hours in emergency departments; a trashed, but highly propagandised  education system graduating ignorant, illiterate and incompetent pupils taught demonstrably little to enable them to to compete on the world scene; the locking up of part-Maori children into the insularity and myopia of Maori-language-only learning – and a reinvented language at that; the massive growth in violence and murder these recent decades; the nationwide drug-taking and epidemic of drunkenness with its consequences in the courts – and the abusing of doctors and nurses in the same emergency departments; the disappearing of our farmland into overseas ownership; the plans to sell the strategically important state owned assets that our parents paid for – to try to keep afloat for a while – the deterioration is starkly profiled.

The list goes on. And it was a comparison with Poland today made by our guest which reminded me how impoverished the country has begun to look , something very noticeable three years ago when travelling down the South Island after a long time away from known places, and seeing the half-occupied towns, the empty shop frontages, the untidy road verges, the closed-down or vanished petrol stations.

We now have, as a he observed, a second world ethos, a kind of consolation prize attitude of aiming to be virtuous – e.g. The stymieing of much-needed mining developments as a result of the Green’s environmental extremism -as if this was good enough. Yet any comparison our achievements with that of our neighbouring Australia alone is quite shocking.

We would have to not travel to be unaware of these things, including even the time-consuming and economic consequences of being passed from operator to operator in queues by our biggest corporations and our telecommunications industry when calling for information. NZPost’s services go from bad to worse -  not just as a result of loss of business through e-mailing.  And above all, it should considerably concern us that while countries like China and India are turning out graduates in engineering and the sciences and investing heavily in technological development , we are graduating hundreds of experts in treaty law and sociology.

Obsessive as this has become, and, culpably, as a result of politicians long encouraging the gravy train of recycled,even untenable treaty claims, no-one knows or cares about treaty negotiations outside New Zealand. Yet the growth in treaty law has become the biggest growth area in law in this country in recent decades.

In reality we are now putting everything through the filter of Maori sensitivity – or, more accurately, that of radicalized and politicized part-Maori very much taking advantage of our political party system to profit at the expense of all other New Zealanders, and demanding utterly disproportional influence on government and local government decisions and undertakings, and with regard to university and research grants  and scholarships.

The situation has become essentially scandalous. And it was the utterly  one-sided presentation of New Zealand and its peoples  in the introduction to our hosting of the Rugby World Cup which should bring home to us what we have lost.

Moreover, in the eyes of the world, in being obsessed with the Treaty of Waitangi -“reinterpreted” and misused to the point of utter folly   – we are perceived as being used as by knaves, as well as misguided ideologues, to make fools  of the rest of us.

What’s to be done about it? In the interests of becoming more fully informed. don’t miss  Bruce Moon’s excellent article - Strident and Spurious Treaty Claims -now posted on our website.

Nothing, however, will be done, if so-called ordinary, i.e. grassroots New Zealanders – from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South and our outlying territories – do not themselves resolve to make a stand.

Does that mean that you yourself don’t need to make a stand…don’t need to bother to come on board to help?

And is it realistic to plan for far better directions for the country?

Yes, it is, if individuals care enough about what they are leaving their children  and grandchildren to inherit  (or to endure?) not to walk away from helping to claim back this country – irrespective of their political affiliations.

And most importantly, for all the well-meant initiatives that other individuals have embarked on, all of which count in their own right, none of these offer the same chance of reversing what has happened to this country as our 100 Days – Claiming Back Democracy initiative. It has been well stated that it is the only real chance of limiting the power of politicians.

By working for what the most democratic country in the world achieved – that period of 100 days after the passing by Parliament of any legislation at all – so that the country has a right to scrutinize it (with an obligation on state-funded media to present both sides of the issues concerning such legislation), we can in future prevent the inflicting of profoundly undemocratic laws on the country.
(See - How It Works -The second page on our website …and Strategies for the Way Forward.)

The most crucial challenge we face at present is to limit the powers of our unrepresentative, List-promoted political oligarchy.

In due course, calling for the repeat of legislation which has undoubtedly damaged the country in socio-political as well as economic areas – such as the invidious and highly damaging anti-smacking legislation – will follow.

But priority must be to first limit the ongoing and future damage that politicians can do. Only our 100Days  - the Facultative Referenda roadblock – can do this – and it is so very simple.

In the words of Arnold Toynbee: “Every age has its own crisis and challenge which must be met – otherwise society collapses.”

And which of us has the right to a soft ride through..?

We need your help for financial support for posters, for advertising and all that will be entailed in gaining publicity for the fight ahead.

Thank you indeed, those of you who are already helping spread the word and have already donated to the cause.

And please remember, those who are waking up to the enormous potential of this movement, that no donation is too small – or even too large (!)

The earlier we come on board to spread the message to others, and to offer such support, the sooner we will eventually claim back this country for democracy.

The alternative..?  see  HOW IT WORKS

©Amy Brooke for 100 Days.

It’s interesting how reluctant we are to call a lie a lie, when challenging those who have told one. The circumlocutions which tiptoe round this offence against the truth of things (but can anything be more important in public debate than addressing the truth of things?) include… a fabrication, a prevarication, an untruth, a misapprehension, misrepresentation…

Yet a deliberate claim that something has been said or done which did simply did not happen is either essentially a downright lie, or a delusion. Gerry Brownlee, for example, claimed that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery review panel could not possibly undertake its task for what some people would regard as the already generous rates of pay available.

Apparently this was completely untrue. Although this National Party minister told his colleagues that the panel must be paid more than twice the recommended rate because it wasn’t possible for them do it for less, reportedly, he had never even asked them.

Some might classify this is a downright lie…unless, perchance, even one of the four member panel, whose members consisted of John Hansen, Jenny Shipley, Anake Goodall and Murray Sherwin had already stated that this was the case – and sown confusion in the minister’s mind.

Not John Hansen  – who told the Herald he would have done the job for the original fee – and might even have waived it.  The reaction of the other panelists was not reported. Jenny Shipley apparently did not respond to interview requests. However, Brownlee states that he did not discuss pay with the nominees.

The question remains: why then, in such worryingly straitened times, would this minister say to his colleagues – “It will not be possible to secure their services under the current fees range” -  if it was palpably untrue? This matter of a Minister of the Crown apparently deliberately misleading his colleagues needs further investigation. Something is very wrong here.

Moreover, how out of touch with the reality of most New Zealanders’ lives  is Gerry Brownlee to regard a pay rate of up to $655 a day for a panel chairman and $415 for panel members as inadequate?  So very many in Christchurch have lost everything – their houses, their businesses, the future  – in the case of some,  their hope of better days  -  and of ever again being back on a healthy financial footing. Was this an appropriate time to try to jack up pay rates for a hand-picked few?  We need better answers from this minister. But accountability from politicians is now apparently largely wishful thinking.

Another important question of accountability arises in relation to reports by the New Zealand media on the supposed New Zealand link with the Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, through Keith Windschuttle’s address to the 2006 SummerSounds Symposium,  which I founded and organised for a decade and a half to provide much-needed debate across the whole spectrum of political belief -  before it morphed into our pro-democracy movement - 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand.  See www.100days.co.nz

The distinguished editor of Quadrant, Australia’s foremost literary/political magazine, delivered a fine address to this symposium.

To read his paper, click on the link below  http://www.sydneyline.com/Adversary%20Culture.htm

There is nothing in Keith Windschuttle’s paper, outlining the problems which face the West, particularly through the left-wing infiltration of universities, which the murderous Breivik could possibly use to justify his rampage of killing. The former left-wing editor of The New Statesman, Paul Johnson, a much respected right-wing historian and columnist issued the same warning as Keith Windschuttle during his own time in New Zealand. Breivik also invoked others such as the highly reputable philosophers John Stuart Mill and Roger Scruton, and, far from being a fundamentalist Christian, a label too loosely applied by media like the politicised New York Times, he claimed, in his manifesto, to dislike their “soft heartedness” and stated that a Christian fundamentalist theocracy is unwanted – it is ” a secular European society”  he was aiming for. He apparently supports celebrating Christmas simply to annoy Muslims.

The Nelson Mail provided a far more balanced assessment of Breivik’s claim, with columnist Karl du Fresne stressing the moderate nature of Windschuttle’s address, and emphasising that he is “an absolutely respectable historian…who ” takes a more conservative view than a lot of his colleagues, and he’s a great defender of Western society and culture. I don’t recall him saying anything exceptional at that seminar.”

The New Zealand Herald however, astonishingly enough, without checking back, quoted comedian Mike King claiming he himself chaired the session. “I do remember Keith as a typical… academic with a superiority complex, who believed that all indigenous people’s (sic) histories of oppression by colonizers were made up by white PC apologists.”

Mike’s statement, alas, was downright bizarre. Although he had attended the Summer Sounds Symposium in previous years, doing a fine job of presiding over the Being Upstanding voluntary contributions on the Saturday evenings with the brilliant Jim Hopkins, it was news to me to read in the Herald that he had actually chaired Keith Windschuttle’s session. The Herald, too, has at last conceded that this was not the case.  Mike was not even present in 2006, so his statement of recall was completely wrong. It has done a great disservice not only to a fine speech, but was utterly misleading in relation to the format of the symposia. Radical activism has never had any place in these debates – it is sad to see Mike indulging in it at a stage when this country has been hijacked – not by majority Maori, but by determined  and radicalized, already wealthy  iwi and downright narcissistic power groups fomenting unrest for self-advantage.  Worse, the National Party is following a well-trodden path by its policies of appeasement, and its indifference to the truth of so many important issues affecting us. However, the rest of us know well that day that the truth of issues is regarded as irrelevant shows that we have gone a long way down a very dangerous path.

It is high time for New Zealanders to wake up to the fact that we are being constantly bombarded with politicized distortions of the truth – even downright lies  - all of which are damaging our country. Nearly all of these involve moves for self-advantage, in one way or another.

The majority can be linked to successive government’s damaging policies, all part of that creeping state intrusion whereby political deal-making and back-scratching strengthens politicians’ hold on power, and encourages the growth of damaging radicalism and separatist movements, with their inevitable backlash.

We’re now undoubtedly faced with the weakening of democracy – as Keith Windschuttle has well illustrated. Don’t miss reading his important and timely address, accessible through the link above – or separately on our Articles page.

Can any of us afford to say that it’s none of our business?

If you want to help to claim back New Zealand – Tell everybody – www.100days.co.nz

© Amy Brooke

Congratulations to all those involved in the Coastal Coalition’s Citizens Initiated Referendum. And especially to Muriel Newman, former act MP and founder of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research (NZCPR) – with her fine organizational skills and indefatigable fundraising.

As Muriel notes, “…it is time that the main Parliamentary parties recognized their responsibility to strengthen the democratic safeguards available to the public”.

However, we all know that they have no intention of doing so. So it is especially to the credit of Muriel, Hugh Barr and others involved in the organization of this highly important Coastal Coalition’s Citizens Initiated Referenda – a form of referenda known as CIR – that they have undertaken the mammoth task of acquiring 400,000 signatures of registered voters within 12 months.

United Future Leader Larry Baldock, too, for months travelled with his wife the length of the country, showing up at every possible public gathering, particularly in the media-neglected rural areas, to acquire the necessary number of signatures as a much-needed democratic protest against the arbitrary and infamous anti-smacking legislation which John Key personally took it upon himself to inflict upon the country. We can recall that Key apparently either buckled under pressure from Helen Clark, or that a certain amount of deal-making went on behind the scenes in order for him to so blithely walk past the wishes of over 85% of the country to introduce legislation to criminalize good parents, removing their rights to use their own judgment with regard to the disciplining of naughty children.

In light of the fact that Key later said, “If I see good parents getting criminalized for lightly smacking their children for the purposes of discipline, I’m going to change the law… If we start seeing that situation breaking down – good parents being hauled before the courts – then I’m going to do something about it”.  *

We well know now that we would be very foolish to trust any assurances that John Key makes.

We can also note in passing the number of I’s in this sentence *.  Prime Minister Key apparently confuses democracy with autocracy – exhibited in this and other instances of diktats by this National Party leader whose feelings of self-worth are sufficiently high for him to ignore the rest of us – and to overrule his Cabinet. Moreover, in an astonishing about-face, John Key  subsequently woke up to the fact that “the anti-smacking law is a complete and utter dog’s breakfast, badly drafted, extremely vague.”

Well, really? Since then things have gone from bad to worse, with pop psychologist Nigel Latta airily reassuring parents that they could relax. The Latta review has since been exposed as lightweight, misleading, and missing out or ignoring important information.

We don’t need to go any further into the mess this law promoted by John Key has created, the damage done to parenting and to worried families, and the undoubtely sinister appearance of police within some schools checking whether children have been smacked at home.

We should have learnt our lesson. Key evidently hasn’t. The Marine and Coastal Area legislation quite shockingly balkanizes the country even further along the racist lines for which the Maori party have been working so relentlessly to advance their own and their neotribal supporters’ interests, rather than working for the good and unity of the country as a whole.

What is equally shocking is that we already know that neither this present National government, nor the Labour Party, will have any interest whatsoever in taking any notice of the CIR petition that Muriel and her supporters are hoping to present to Parliament. Moreover, the necessary number of signatures, 400,000, should well and truly sufficiently indicate (as with previous CI R petitions) that they are representative of great concern being felt by majority New Zealanders about a particular issue. They are also an utterly excessive number to have to raise to call for MPs (apparently now our masters, rather than our servants…) to graciously allow the country to vote in a binding referendum, to indicate the directions which majority New Zealanders want the government to take.

Majority New Zealanders, that is. And the catch is that under MMP, the majority of New Zealanders have well and truly lost out. National and Labour have both been so anxious to put the agenda of minority parties like the Maori Party and the Greens ahead of the wishes of the majority, that manipulative individuals such as Tariana Turia can get away with complaining about “the tyranny of the majority”. Ms Turia needs to be enlightened that this is what we call a democracy – that is, a system whereby what most people wish for carries the day. Ultimately, this is the most defensible and reasonable system of government.

Although the Coastal Coalition’s petition will need 400,000 signatures to be gathered in this small country – (an utterly unreasonably number to be required  before it can be put to the electorate) –  to then duly be ignored by the government –  in Switzerland, the democratically most successful country in the world, with nearly twice our population, only 100,000 signatures are needed for any CIR proposition brought forward by the people to be presented by the government to be voted upon – and if successful, to be bound in legislation.

This is where some clarification seems to be needed. Muriel has referred both to the Coastal Coalition’s Citizens Initiated Referendum which her New Zealand Centre for Political Research is spear-heading, with Dr Barr  -  and to the 100 days  provision in Swiss law – which is an entirely different referendum process.

This is causing some confusion. The 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement of which I am convener, and which can be found at its website  of www.100days.co.nz  – is working for an entirely different referendum process.  It has no affiliation with the New Zealand Centre for Political Research – and is not associated with, nor promoting, any other movement or political party.

The aim of our movement is to stop in its tracks any legislation which Parliament passes against the wishes of the country at large, by providing for a 100 day period when the legislation passed cannot be acted upon.  During this time, if concern is raised, a call goes out – (in Switzerland to gather  50,000 signatures, not 100,000,  as with a CIR referendum) –  to require a vote to be put to the country. It is obligatory for the government to do so, and, when the country has spoken, the results are binding on the government.

This quite different referendum process is called a Facultative Referendum. Proportionately the number of signatures that would be needed in New Zealand to call for such a referendum would be only 26,000.

The 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand  movement to entrench Facultative Referenda is a quite separate initiative from that of Muriel’s group, promoting  Citizen’s Initiated Referenda.  Valuable as their initiative is in enabling concerned citizens to mount a protest against legislation which the government has already passed, contrary to the interests of the country – or in calling for legislation to redress wrong directions, the far more direct process of Facultative Referenda, of that 100 Days provision, actually stops Parliament inflicting legislation on the country with which the country disagrees. It is the most effective method of all for ensuring that a country can claim to be a genuine democracy.

Our own movement was officially launched – and under way onwards  – at the Summersounds Symposium of 2009, which has traditionally involved New Zealanders from across the political, academic, business and senior media sectors and overseas guests – particularly from Australia – senior media, analysts, historians – and last year, a good friend and long-time Summersounds  supporter, Greig Fleming, who came back from Zürich to give us a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of the 100 days provision in Switzerland. It is this 100 days moratorium (or scrutiny process) which was finally adopted when the Swiss people realized that, although they were the most democratically responsible country in Europe, they still did not have effective control over their politicians. It was  their brilliant conception, this check-this-out period after the passing of legislation to enable careful consideration of what it actually meant to the country, which put a cap on Switzerland as a direct and very real democracy.

As I had already written for some time on this concept, and had previously spoken on the 100 days concept of Facultative Referenda at two previous symposia,  with growing awareness on all sides that New Zealand was no longer even a representative democracy (MPs no longer represent their electorates but do as their party tells them), it was decided that our 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement into which the Summersounds Symposium then morphed, should now be officially convened to begin its campaign.

This was publicly announced, and its core group of good supporters has grown and is now spreading around the country. It was good that Muriel was present at this launch, to become informed of our directions – and good to see her taking note of the thinking behind it which explains why ultimately it is the most practicable way forward for putting a stop to the encroaching part of the state – and the power grab of autocratic party leaders.

However we made it plain at the time, that we were not going to become affiliated with any other group, no matter how good its intentions – or well-meaning its directions. We agreed that to become associated with any political party in particular would polarize the movement and alienate the support of those who with good reason do not trust political parties. We can only speak for ourselves and have no other agenda – except to see that democracy once more becomes a reality in this country.

The success of our 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement is the best hope of achieving this,  and will undoubtedly eventually do so.

But it is important that there is no confusion, and, for this reason, we must point out that this movement is not the one that Muriel’s NZCPR is involved with – and remains entirely separate.

 In the meantime, some confusion has arisen, with Muriel’s recent post again referring to the 100 Days – but no doubt inadvertently omitting to let her readers know that this movement is not being managed by Muriel’s organisation but has already been claimed and officially convened – as our 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand movement.

We hope that no further confusion arises, and that in future, when this 100 Days concept  is again raised on the NZCPR website, unaware readers will be notified of, and sent to support our movement, already well under way and attracting a great deal of grassroots support.

Full details are on our website, www.100days.co.nz – together with posts which outline strategic directions for the way forward – and a number of excellent articles. We’ll be adding to these, to make it very easy to choose the most effective way to make sure political parties are not given what they most want at this coming election. The result  – the real beginning of the fight back for a genuine democracy.

Do pass this message on, to inform others. And we love you subscribing to our newsletters! Don’t miss out…

©  Amy Brooke

The recent Don Brash -  Peter Sharples  debate following the ACT advertisement designed by John Ansell and addressing what is undoubtedly the maorification of New Zealand (as disturbing a process for many part-Maori as it is to non-Maori New Zealanders) was interesting for the different approach each took addressing – or avoiding – the questions.

There are issues on which, like other New Zealanders, I strongly disagree with Don Brash. And like other politicians he stood up late to be counted in this debate. The dereliction of politicians, long intent (as we are all well aware ) on buying “the Maori vote” is undoubtedly one of the reason Maori radicalism has become so entrenched and divisive. But what do the notions of principles and morality now have to do with our parliament?

However, any genuine debate must be founded on the actual evidence. Don Brash to some extent addressed the issues. His was evidence-based debate.  Pita  Sharples opted for the deeply-wounded, emotive, hand-waving, fact-dodging rhetoric which simply made him look foolish to those interested in an evidence-based debate, and sent viewers to Alice in Wonderland territory. We can recall that  in “Through the Looking Glass” Humpty Dumpty expostulates as following:

 “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

This, of course, was Lewis Carroll’s highlighting of the deceit and avoidance of fact that passed for politicized debate  in his own time. Words are a form of control, and misusing them to capture a debate by sidestepping the actual facts – the genuine evidence, where it is found to be inconvenient  or would prove that  one’s own “facts” are inaccurate – is a debating trick with a long pedigree. It relies, as did Maori Party leader Pita Sharpies’ contribution, on emotive rhetoric, on oratory, on manipulation, on sidestepping or twisting facts to elicit misplaced sympathy from the audience. And above all it relies heavily on simply repeating assertions that are in fact quite wrong. Lewis Carroll illustrated this well in The Hunting of the Snark  - “What I tell you three times is true.”

The Maori Party has got this down to a fine art – repeating assertions that are in fact not true, knowing well that something repeated often enough is usually uncritically accepted – especially in a country where the education system is weak. New Zealanders in our schools and throughout our media have been thoroughly propagandized in recent decades – schoolchildren long and culpably systematically and deliberately brainwashed in this area by a highly politicized Ministry of Education.

 In his head-on debate with ACT Party leader Don Brash, Pita  Sharples employed denial, emotive rhetoric, the  repeated assertion of quite wrong facts and an interesting new claim – that the majority of New Zealanders support the divisive directions in which radicalized individuals – demonstrably by no means speaking for even majority Maori – have been leading us these recent decades.

 I say interesting, because the wily Tariana Turia, too, apparently found her long display of antagonism, almost rabidly so, to “Pakeha” (reigned in by Helen Clark with one eye on the electorate)  eventually less than useful to her and Pita Sharples. Viewing the new honeymoon identification with mainstream New Zealanders which Sharples produced was a reminder of the smile on the face of the tiger. One can contrast the new verbal cuddling-up to the electorate at large with what the radicalized Maori Party is up to, behind the scenes. National Party leader John Key’s close personal relationship with Sharples and National’s betrayal of the country, by ignoring its undertaking to abolish the racist Maori seats, and by its extraordinary support of the equally racist Marine and Coastal Area legislation, have disillusioned many.

It’s been said that “Only in New Zealand could those who argue for equality of treatment under the law for all citizens be regarded as racist by members of a party that exists solely to further the interests of their ethnic group”. In other words, the adjective racist can here only properly belong to those advocating for Maori-only advantage. But it is craftily being used as a bludgeon against those concerned at the growing divisiveness of this country.

We need a far higher level of scrutiny of the actual actions of the Maori Party and its fellow travellers well intent on self-advantage – camouflaged by all the careful projections of hurt feeling, challenges to mana  (arguably too often equated with ego,  if not hubris ) and other smokescreens distorting the obvious. Typically, leader Pita Sharples’ press release after the debate again played the sympathy card  – “sad, negative, disturbing “ – in relation to an advertisement that majority New Zealanders would endorse  – even those who keep their heads down. Sharples was short on facts  – long on baloney – to use one of the favourite words of the brave Margaret Thatcher, who, whatever you think of her policies, had an instinct for hocus-pocus.

Everything the Maori Party hopes for – continued funding (which, we  know, does not get through to Maori at large who are most in need); continued self-importance; the media microphone held in front of aggrieved faces; and now, of course, far greater political power and advantage  – depends upon fomenting the continued divisiveness of centre-staging a now part-Maori only population, two centuries, seven, eight, or more generations removed from their first Stone Age encounter with Europeans and their subsequent intermarriage with other New Zealanders of varying genetic inheritance.

In this respect, it is no accident that there is never any recognition from now part-Maori that they have an equally, and even arguably far more important colonial genetic inheritance from those who brought civilisation to this country – with all the very real benefits that ensued to these constantly warring peoples with no original title at all to their lands. What is in fact a highly politicized move, immersing  young part-Maori in te reo schools and learning, not so much for the children’s own benefit – given the realities of the 21st century world – but as potential tribal recruitment and  to increase tribes’ political strength – should be vigorously questioned.

Underlying all this debate is the Treaty of Waitangi, now distorted and manipulated well past its original intent. Unquestionably this was that New Zealanders should live as one people, equal in status with equal rights to all under the authority of the Crown. 

However, tribal executives realized in recent years, as the very question of who today is  Maori was obviously going to assume greater importance (given the lack of any reasonable definition following the well-engineered  1974 removal of  the definition of an at least 50% genetically-Maori requirement), that they had  more prospects for increasing their power, for  both personal and financial advantage, by challenging the obvious intent of the treaty. Contesting the wording would muddy the waters and sow confusion.

That they should ever have succeeded to today’s extent  can be laid at the door of our highly compromised parliament – and the vote-buying with which we are well acquainted. So unscientific and nonsensical now are our census requirements that even a mere smidgen of Maori ancestry, i.e. “emotionally identifying” with Maori, allows  individuals to classify themselves as Maori. This is palpably ridiculous, and dishonest. The result is that most of Maoridom’s most strident activists are more European than Maori. There is something very wrong here.

Things went rapidly downhill in the field of race relations, from the mid-80s,  in Geoffrey Palmer’s time as Minister of Justice, when in the view of many, he was responsible for the feel-good folly of setting out to address  conflicting and problematic tribal claims right back to the 19th century time of the Treaty of Waitangi.  What was ignored was that from this time, in spite of the fact  that from the signing of the treaty, and continuing right down to the 20th century,  funding had been consistently directed to every possible area which might benefit Maori and assist their needy and disadvantaged, especially those moving from the maraes to the cities to obtain work. Special scholarships; all kinds of trade apprenticeships; prior placings in universities; special consideration and grants available in housing, in welfare, in education through the former Department of Maori affairs – every possible door of opportunity was provided  in conscience and goodwill to advance Maori interests in particular. As the push for special privileges, quotas, agencies, commissions and departments took off , correspondingly nepotism, tribalism, and racism began to flourish. Many able Maori were welcomed into the professions – some into law to climb on board the treaty gravy train – others into well-paid organisations like the Fisheries Commission or the Crown Forest Rental Trust.

 There was no recognition whatsoever of this in Maori Party leader Pita Sharples’ misplaced rhetoric constantly complaining about part-Maoris’ so-called disadvantage – and this was an area where Don Brash’s contribution to the debate fell down. Had he been far better informed, he would have been able to point out that today’s $37 billion Maori economy was largely built on the efforts of non-Maori New Zealanders, and, far from being earned by the tribes now craftily claiming it isn’t enough – was largely handed over by the people of this country to address genuine grievances and to settle them for all-time. It was also meant to advantage the most needy, not the tribal executives who have managed to appropriate the settlements for their own politicized aims, for tribal development, and to finance young part-Maori into key areas of education  – e.g. with regard to treaty issues in our schools, universities and media placements (only provided that these will advantage the tribe – as specifically stated by Robert Mahuta – when leader of Tainui).

 Similarly, Ngai Tahu leader Tipene O’Regan was reported at the time of the highly controversial and indeed apparently quite wrongly endorsed  Ngai Tahu settlement as saying Ngai Tahu had no intention of addressing the needs of the poor and disadvantaged  of his tribe. Suggesting it was a waste of time to help these people, he handed the problem back to “the government “ – i.e. expecting, as indeed does Pita Sharples, all other New Zealanders to provide ongoing social welfare for Maoris whom the tribal leaders were, and are, ignoring.

Although the settlements were meant, in the eyes of New Zealanders, to benefit all Maori, those many thousands not affiliated to nor registered with any tribe have had their needs ignored by the tribes. While the Maori Party leaders invoke all Maoridom, and sanctimoniously talk about “our people” they have by no means ensured that all Maori shared equally, according to taxpayers’ expectation. On the contrary.

Nothing has changed- except that things are getting worse. That the boorish, foul-mouthed Hone Harawira  in whom the standards of civilized, reasoned debate are absent, should attract enough votes to actually be in parliament is an indictment on all those who have so indefatigably worked to worsen race relations these recent decades, and the folly of those who have continued, through misguided paternalism, to regard Maori as “special”, simply because their immigration preceded that of the colonists – although not of the people before them whom Maori themselves recognized as having preceded them,  calling them the  tangata whenua – the first people – the phrase now wrongly appropriated by activist Maori to gain special advantage.

What has happened to this country with regarded to radicalized Maori seems to have developed as a kind of mental illness linked to a spiritual malaise, fostered by self-importance, an eye to the main chance, a lack of respect  for democratic principles of equality before the law, and a refusal to acknowledge the enormous benefits that colonization brought to this country in housing, health, clothing, agricultural, educational,  technological and scientific advantages of which Maori activists, while calling for separatism,  have by no means been reluctant to avail themselves. The sheer nonsense of activist Maori claiming compensation for any use of New Zealand’s indigenous flora  – while not correspondingly being charged for the use  of European-derived discoveries as basic as aspirin, or as important as antibiotics, is in essence, incredible.

With Maori wealth now very considerable,  the thinking at large among New Zealanders as a whole has turned towards the need for Maori activists, including the Maori Party,  to use their own resources given to them for this purpose – to take care of all their own people. $37 billion directed towards the needs of a population based on a 50 % Maori genetic inheritance would go a very long way.  Instead comes the untruthful and repetitive accusation that past governments “have not done enough for Maori”.

Following Geoffrey Palmer’s disastrous opening of Pandora’s box,  the claims settlement process is now a major industry, some genuine, many opportunistic, and recently arguably fraudulent with the revisiting of claims already apparently genuinely settled  in the past and now resurrected, reinvented, with  what were actual facts now denied or contested. Although the Maori tribes are now well able to fund for themselves enterprises and undertakings in connection with the protection of their language, their culture, with taking care of their own poor and disadvantaged, they continue as of right to attempt to raid the pockets of majority New Zealanders with their continuing emotive hard luck tales. What Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia are still demanding is, essentially even more targeted and damaging Maori welfare – in areas where the Maori Party itself, tribal executives and various political leaders, should be taking responsibility.

But at least in 2005, as National Party leader, Don Brash stood up to be counted on these issues and was immediately brayed down by a thoroughly biased, equally activist media. However on actual facts, as opposed to the Sharples brand of rhetoric, Brash had the right of the debate.

If indeed as the evidence suggests, today’s hands-out-as-of-right-you-owe-us mentality is in fact a form of at least psychological malaise, it needs to be dealt to and repudiated- rather than being consistently appeased by bestowing more and more of what we can call a virtual Danegeld.  The newest weapon to hand is Maori language week. The move to attempt to compel teachers to learn te reo  – of no interest or relevance whatsoever to those with degrees or interests in physics, chemistry, mathematics, other languages and disciplines – is basically fascist.

 What is also at stake here is an activist push against the so-called “linguistic imperialism of English,” a splenetic sentiment straight from the textbook of Marxist ideology. However, what we are being browbeaten over is the promotion of a language which was interesting and unique in its own right but is no longer authentic, with many thousands of new, pseudo-Maori words added to it, in the pretence that it can take its place, multinationally, alongside languages which have naturally evolved over the centuries.

This of course is untrue, and neo-Maori  constant centre-staging is not only tedious, but costly and extravagant, arguably insulting to the majority, whose Euro-New Zealand culture is based on English. Arguably the world’s most useful and richest language, it is far more important in today’s world for young part-Maori needing to be competently taught standards of excellence in what is also their heritage – a language and culture rich in its history, mythology, poetry, its creative and imaginative writing which benefited from those other great civilizations which contributed to this legacy which we have inherited.

The current insistence on trying to force young part-Maori, many of them far more predominately of European genetic inheritance, into the straightjacket of a reinvented te reo, is not ultimately to their best advantage, focusing them towards a myopic, balkanized view of the world in which they are inappropriately centre-staged – instead of being regarded as one of many ethnic groups whose traditions can be appropriately respected. But this should not be to the extent of expecting the majority culture to pay a kind of ritual obeisance to them.  Matariki, for example, is now being given a highly politicized media presence each year, as if central to our culture – ignoring the fact that the rising and falling of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades star cluster were part of European and far older civilizations’ patterns of observance – rather than being a special Maori discovery.

Moreover, many New Zealanders find it insulting that newly-coined Maori language, for example, should take precedence on formal occasions such as in the singing of our national anthem – at the expense of their own culture – and in naming new places, ships, and so on. Many visitors to New Zealand find it highly irritating that they have to endure lessons on the newly politicized version of the Treaty of Waitangi. They find Maori place names confusing and over-similar.

Instance after instance these recent decades has been reported of politicized Maori welfare groups criminally appropriating money specifically set up to address the problems of those who have not by one whit benefited from what now amounts to the wealthy Maori economy. How many criminal charges have been laid? When concerned Maori themselves have expressed disquiet and anger at these tribal and/or in-groups simply appropriating very large sums of over-freely granted taxpayer money for their own and their whanau’s benefit, no court action is taken – as would happen in any real justice system – or in any other circumstance – (except in parallel cases of highly wealthy, well-placed non-Maori corporate individuals who have also managed in recent years to profit from what have been essentially taxpayer rip-offs).

The consequences have been either non-discernible  – or risibly inadequate. The fact that both these circumstances  have presented our recent governments with political hot potatoes to juggle no doubt accounts for their curious lack of interest in sheeting home accountability to those concerned. Nor, given the considerable wealth of the tribes, should the Minister of Education be continuing to hand out taxpayer funds of millions of dollars for te reo immersion schools – as she is continuing to do. There are very obvious reasons why so many Maori children do not perform well at school, some because of parental attitude, activist propaganda, and a now second-rate education system. However, the current trend of treating part-Maori students as different, basically inferior, needing special help and a less demanding education is no part of the solution. Highlighting the academic success of  Maori achievers, indeed Maori heroes, and Maoris manifest ability to prosper worldwide, without demeaning special aids, would be far more helpful.

What we are seeing today is the heritage, traditions and culture of all New Zealanders – the majority descended from our colonial ancestors and united under the treaty of Waitangi – now being swept aside in the forelock-tugging  attitude  to Maori triumphalism. It is a shocking indictment on Nelson College for example, that while boasting of its links to Lord Rutherford, one of the world’s scientific geniuses, it actually sold a unique portrait of Rutherford and other memorabilia related to this prestigious former pupil to fund a whare for pupils of Maori and Pacific Island descent. Ironically, Nelson College boasts of storing the school’s taonga -  including fishhooks, stone adzes, and a number of taiaha – regarding them as treasures. The contrast in the treatment given to these endowments of the college is utterly inappropriate and shameful. The palpable disrespect shown to the school’s precious Rutherford inheritance simply in order to give the Maori and Pacific Island students “more of a status” and to provide “the next generation of leaders for the tribal groups” could not be more ill-judged.

We do not need the continuing fomenting of separatism, the fostering of divisiveness and of specialness – essentially an inappropriate projection of superiority by our ethnic minorities – in particular by activist Maori extremists over Euro-New Zealanders whose forefathers brought to a primitive, warring peoples the opportunities of a new world hitherto completely closed to them.

What is essentially taking place in this country is a kind of internal war waged by highly skilled Maori radicals using every politicized weapon at hand to continue to divide the country for self-advantage. Moves to frame a new constitution based on an utterly untrue,  legally and historically untenable “treaty partnership” are well underway – and not one of the political parties can be trusted to recognize this as fraudulent, if it disadvantages them to do so. Yet most New Zealanders would overwhelmingly agree that race ought to have no place in any constitution – not in a genuine democracy.

But then we demonstratively no longer have a genuine democracy  – hence the only practical way to the future  – our 100 Days – Claiming back New Zealand movement – www.100days.co.nz  - now spreading throughout New Zealand, and gaining growing support from expats overseas, deeply dismayed at what is happening to this country.

We are not served by the duplicity and evasiveness of politicians promoting ethnic separatism and avoiding the real issues which should be up for genuine debate – in favour of sympathy-gathering and false rhetoric. We should demand that any future media-sponsored debates are based upon the presentation of actual facts, rather than the avoidance of these in the propagandizing of the usual opportunists.

 ©Amy Brooke

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