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In recent days I’ve been reading Steven Joyce’s brilliant autobiography (an undeniable star performer of the Key/English Government). So much of the book is evocative in a pleasant, nostalgic way and I encourage you to purchase a copy.
The passages in Joyce’s book dealing with his time running the National Party and running the election campaign in 2005 lead me to put my cards on the table about something that raised a few eyebrows at the time. One only hopes history is not going to repeat itself. Although my political involvement as a younger man wasn’t particularly notable, I was a member of the National Party, on and off, from my teens until 2005 when I walked away in disgust for a while. I rejoined in 2010.
I was good for a donation whenever asked and rather enjoyed walking vast distances delivering leaflets at election time, although I was strongly discouraged from door knocking due to my accent (and apparently pompous demeanor, haha). I was also once belted up when delivering leaflets at one election by a couple of Labour thugs, one of whom later became a cabinet minister. But I was hardly an ‘activist’ like many thousands of other people.
What shocked and appalled me in 2005 were the Iwi/Kiwi billboards. They were an utter disgrace, which still makes my blood run cold at the very thought of it.
Whatever you may think of the concept of (for lack of a better term) ‘one law for all’, Don Brash and others knew precisely what they were doing and I shudder at what it would have meant if he’d have won. Brash isn’t exactly a ‘thinker’ that sincerely opposes special treatment based on race. His Hobson’s Pledge organisation does have some thinkers: people who’ve published well-argued, well-reasoned books on a range of topics, but Brash is just out to cause trouble. I believed that then, and say it again now.
The suggestion the Maori people are somehow ‘the enemy’ is preposterous. Most Maori couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, let alone get their act together and end up subjugating the 85 per cent. It’s so ludicrous as to not being worth debating. Yet they’re a convenient punching bag for people like Don Brash and David Seymour. The little code words, the little one liners; we all know what they really mean and what it leads to – intentionally so.
My first spouse was from Rhodesia and experienced this sort of thing first hand. Mugabe creating division on racial grounds, two classes of people, the manipulation of the population, lighting fires then pouring petrol on them: all sorts of evil stuff. It’ll be New Zealand if these desperate lunatics get their way and the only losers will be the Maori. Oh, and you. So please Mr Luxon – stick to your guns: knock this referendum twaddle on the head; we don’t need more division on racial grounds. It is simply wrong – just as Iwi/Kiwi was wrong.
