Winston Peters has done it again. The NZ First leader looked at the Green Party’s latest brainwave, a one year freeze on data centre consents, and called it exactly what it is: appallingly retarded.
The media, of course, lost their minds. Not over the policy. Not over the fact that New Zealand could be chasing a multi billion dollar industry while the Greens try to shut the door on it. No. They clutched their pearls over the word.
Peters was having none of it. Asked if he should be using the term, he doubled down. “Of course I just used it. People use the word ‘retard’ and when it comes to that sort of thing, they are retards, yes.”
He then wandered off with a grin and the parting shot, “Make New Zealand great again.”
Cue the predictable howling. Disability advocates, the Special Olympics, Broadcasting Standards surveys...the whole industrial complex of manufactured offence. Fifty one per cent of New Zealanders apparently find the word ‘totally unacceptable’ in all broadcast contexts. Boo hoo. No one cares. Winston certainly doesn’t and neither do I. We need to claim these words back from the language police. They used to mean something clinical. Now they’re just another stick to beat anyone who refuses to speak in approved, corporate, HR approved dialect.
The actual issue got buried under the moral panic, as usual. The Greens want a moratorium on data centres because they are worried about electricity demand and power prices. Peters’ response was simple: they don’t understand the opportunity. New Zealand could be a world leader in this sector. Instead the Greens want to hit the pause button while the rest of the planet races ahead. That is not careful stewardship. That is economic self harm shabbily dressed up as environmental virtue.
Peters was in full flight on Tuesday. He also described the Opportunity Party as racist and communist. He is not wrong. Their policies reek of both. Yet the media treat them like the bright new hope of the centre. Funny how that works.
He took a swipe at National’s rush to ban social media for under 16s with the classic line, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” And when one reporter kept interrupting about Chris Hipkins, Peters shut it down with pure Winston: “Only goats butt. And you’re one of them.”
It was classic Peters. Combative, unapologetic and highly entertaining. The gallery of the permanently offended will spend the next week writing think pieces about harm and language and the need for leaders to model better behaviour. Meanwhile ordinary New Zealanders will shrug and get on with their day, quietly relieved that at least one politician still talks like a human being instead of a corporate diversity statement.
The Greens’ data centre policy remains retarded. The reaction to Peters saying so remains hysterical. And Winston remains, as ever, the man who refuses to play along.
