Waitangi: a shameful farce, as is John Key and Chris Finlayson’s abusing New Zealanders’ trust.
There’s more than one way to abuse the people of a country. You can call them names, badmouth them, as John Key has previously done, reportedly accusing New Zealanders of being “North Korean” when they look with apprehension at Communist China’s move down into the Pacific – aiming for territorial advantage as well as gobbling up and monopolising more and more of our resources. But then Key is obviously historically under-informed and more than lightweight with his shrugging off of concerns that the majority of New Zealanders hold, with good reason.
Whatever has happened to middle New Zealand’s apparently non-existent right to expect accountability from the Prime Minister and his Cabinet in relation to their extraordinary accommodation of radicalised iwi’s claims, some now proven to be untrue? Key has used this year’s Waitangi Day celebration farce to describe very probably reasonable New Zealanders as “extremists”, although many are in near despair about what is happening to this country. Who are his “permanently aggrieved protestors”? Whoever wrote his ambiguous speech has left this issue hanging, although majority New Zealanders have no say whatsoever on these issues, excluded even from representation on the hugely biased and perceivedly corrupt Waitangi Tribunal.
Similarly, Key’s chosen Minister of Treaty negotiations, Chris Finlayson, arguably one of the most damaging politicians to have been inflicted on this country, dismisses as “clowns” highly reputable New Zealanders intelligent enough to raise questions about the deliberately fostered promotion of racist advantage, and the damage it is causing not only in economic, but in socio-political areas.
Finlayson, who was never even elected to Parliament by New Zealanders, simply ignores questions put to him as Minister. He is known for his arrogance and for his tart tongue. He was handpicked by the Prime Minister, when grassroots National Party members were deprived of the ability to themselves determine the list membership of the party, now apparently composed of yes-men and women who, far from representing their electorates, or the majority of New Zealanders, simply jump when told to. As Nick Smith, MP for Nelson, recently boasted, “When the Prime Minister says jump, I say how high. (See the current INVESTIGATE, Feb/March). He claims it’s the only way a political party can operate.
He’s wrong, of course. He should have said that it is the only way a party of yes-men and women can operate. It certainly isn’t the only way a political party can operate, but it’s a very revealing statement showing that what Key says, goes.
So what do we know do we know of John Key, this individual content to shower hundreds of millions of dollars taken from New Zealand workers, trades-people and professionals, hard-earned dollars to settle apparently pretty well any opportunistic claim, many of them not only simply unproven, but merely highly conveniently alleged – well and truly settled in the past, at a good going rate at the time.
Key the man, the charismatic smiler? Key the statesman of gravitas, one of whose two favourite TV programmes is My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding? Key, now the virtual ruler of New Zealand, describing his own wife in embarrassingly sexist terms as “hot”; our image-bearing leader who admitted envying Australian Shane Warne’s relationship with an also “hot” Liz Hurley (maintaining that “she’d be thrilled by the endorsement”); who wouldn’t mind being Tiger Woods; and didn’t mind mincing onto a catwalk, camping it up for his audience. Our Prime Minister was apparently pink with pleasure when dancing on stage with drag queens on a Big Day Out, and made a fool of himself on the Letterman Show when opining that one of the top 10 reasons to visit New Zealand was our having “the loosest slot machines in the Pacific Rim.”
Key’s choices tell us a lot about him, and many now find him loose-lipped, ignorant, lightweight and embarrassing. Though his formally perceivably affable and ever-smiling “relaxed” persona won him support from New Zealanders willing to take him on trust, that trust has now been eroded. This self-willed and highly ambitious individual sets high store on getting his own way – apparently irrespective of what happens to the country. Surrounded by a cabinet of yes-men, including Finlayson, Steven Joyce, and others whom New Zealanders did not vote into parliament, he virtually rules the country, intent on getting his own way.
Even those who promote his asset sales programme cannot for a moment dispute the fact that this National Government is selling a source of wealth that our previous generations worked for; that New Zealanders as a whole (not the National cabinet) own – and that we will be long term very much the losers when the wealth they produce now passes into the hands of overseas buyers, including no doubt those Communist Chinese-backed corporations that are steadily commercially colonising us, to acquire our assets.
The Crafar farms – offered as a job lot only to New Zealanders – but available to buy individually overseas? Why? To whose advantage? Not New Zealanders.
This country is now apparently in such dire straits that families are having to pack up and leave for overseas, to find work, to survive. Our young are leaving in record numbers. Mothers are being forced out into the workforce, unable to afford to stay home to look after their own children. What has happened to the country when among our brightest and best, young university scientists, in debt from those student loans which, they were, assured, would provide them with a good income, now find it is impossible to get job tenure within the universities, the latter cash-strapped for funding – except where special courses are provided directed towards Maori advantage. These same young scientists, and others, for example, family breadwinners, are having to reapply for their own jobs, with no security to underpin their families’ survival, even to securely mortgage a home, as we suffer the consequences of a mis-managed and greatly impoverished country.
And yet, our Prime Minister has the nerve to call upon New Zealanders to celebrate Waitangi Day, a day of tedious and predictable centre-staging by abusive and violent, radicalised Maori, including the awful Titewhai Harawira, (described today by Key as “a reasonably gentle old lady”) when a major reason for the poor pay packet so many New Zealanders now take home is what has been removed from them, in taxes, to pay for what now amounts, accumulatively, to nearly $40 billion owned by Maori-only interests – while they manage to simultaneously plead poverty.
At the root of so much of our increasing poverty is the damage being done to New Zealanders’ incomes by the fact that they are being forced to continually pay for the now provable rorts by which manipulative and unscrupulous iwi (by no means mainstream Maori, themselves packing up and leaving) are taking advantage of our vote-seeking political parties to contrive special, unjustified, and now markedly unfair, advantage for themselves only. And the government has the nerve to call New Zealanders to celebrate…
What will today be the last straw for many is that the Tainui and Ngai Tahu tribes, already having received taxpayer compensation (which there are very good grounds indeed to assert simply can’t be justified historically, and who were cunning enough (Ngai Tahu with the Minister of Treaty Negotiations Chris Finlayson representing them at the time) to claim larger entitlements in future. Having achieved these, they now hint it is not enough. Inevitably. Last December Tainui were topped up to the tune of $70 million, Ngai Tahu to $68 million – as well, of course, having been previously additionally given conservation land they had no democratic right to, but which they were awarded.
Today Key’s boast is that hundreds of millions of dollars more is to flow to the northern tribes, $200 million to one group alone.
It will not be John Key who will dip into his own pocket. While so many other areas of the economy suffer, and those tribes which have already won very handsome payouts apparently have no intention (and have stated so in the past) of seeing any of their handouts go to the poor and needy of their own tribes) we know who will be paying.
Most New Zealanders instinctively know that something has gone very wrong with our country. Most also know that self-serving, and some certainly not very bright politicians, dominated by self-willed leaders, have been very much part of this.
The outlook ahead? Basically, more of the same, with Labour equally culpable, and little hope for restoring the country to its former prosperity – let alone putting a stop to the ongoing racial divisiveness, extortion and greed.
There is only one way forward, and that is through controlling our politicians.
The only practical way to manage this is by insisting on the 100 Day provision to become part of our law…the provision that no matter what legislation is passed in parliament, the country has a scrutiny period of 100 days available to examine and either endorse, or reject it.
First – do no harm. First then, we need to work to advance this movement to put a stop to legislation that harms us as a country, as a people.
The 100 Days, Facultative referendum, does just that. It works. It helped turn Switzerland into the most prosperous and successful of all democracies.
One step at a time – first to stop our MPs from inflicting on us decisions and directions that damage us.
Later, but next in importance, we can work to remove legislation that has already done so.
The call must be for individuals themselves to help to save his country from our politicians – i.e. the part of it that still belongs to New Zealanders, inexorably diminishing.
In the end, it all depends on the individual.
Help to prevent the ongoing abuse of their power by our politicians!
“A dead thing can go with the stream but only a living thing can go against it.” G.K. Chesterton.
Check out www.100days co.nz – Join us, and tell others…
100 DAYS - CLAIMING BACK NEW ZEALAND 