Have Your Say

(Apologies if this has been published earlier)

‘From Winston Peters in response to Chris Hipkins’ allegation over the weekend’:
(Courtesy of The Daily Examiner NZ)
‘STARTS
Labour now relies on ideological soundbites as a basis of their policy making – which when given even a cursory glance are totally bereft of any facts.
They have become the ‘party of moral outrage’ – obsessed with accusations, ‘gotcha politics’, woke ideology, and opposing anything that happens to float by.
There is nothing that the government is implementing that should come as a surprise to Hipkins. Everything was not only campaigned on, it was in our respective election manifestos and in our coalition agreements dated last year. Perhaps he is just surprised that a government is actually delivering on its promises.
The spiritual home of the Labour Party is the West Coast – the site of the miners’ strike in 1908 which spawned the party that used to represent the workers of New Zealand – the gold miners, the coal miners, the labourers, the foresters, the fisheries, the hard working blue-collar battlers of our country. The catch cry was ‘a fair day’s pay, for a fairs day’s work’. They represented those workers in the very industries which have now become the anathema of who and what the Labour Party represents today.
If a political party today frothed at the mouth every chance they got about the coalition government being ‘racist, anti-Māori, colonisers, white supremacists, exterminators of Māori’, you could place any member of the Labour, Green, or Māori Party caucus at that podium and you wouldn’t know which was which. Who do Labour now represent? It seems they don’t even know themselves.
The Labour Party has decided their entire re-election strategy will be acting like a recently divorced partner – standing back and asking “don’t you miss me yet?” The lack of self-awareness is astounding.
The fact is, the last three years of the Labour government oversaw a deteriorating economy, deteriorating education and health systems, worsening law and order on our streets, massively increased debt, record immigration, crumbling infrastructure, a cost-of-living crisis, and a hugely divided society. That is not ideology – that is a fact.
The woke agenda of the left has crept in like a cancer that has spread so deep into their divisive thinking it has become their sole focus.
The key aspect of Hipkins’ speech was what he said without saying it. It has been clear for some time that the Labour Party had a forlorn choice – attempt to move to the centre to hopelessly try to regain their votes, or push further towards the woke, cultural, and Marxist left. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which path they have chosen. But that ‘siloed-left’ is occupied by the Māori Party and the Greens with the exact same messaging, the exact same ideology, the exact same rhetoric.
Hipkins’ speech showed just how far the Labour Party has descended away from its roots, and just how unambiguously they have abandoned and forgotten the very people and industries who founded their party over a hundred years ago.
Their focus now is on issues such as race and drumming up racial rhetoric that only serves to divide our country and ignores the vast majority of New Zealanders who just want a functioning health system, a top class education for their kids, first world wages, and an affordable home. That’s what all New Zealanders want – Māori and non-Māori.
Delivering those four things has always been the focus of New Zealand First, and is the total focus for this coalition government – a government with a record number of Māori in Cabinet, and where parliament has the largest representation of Māori.
To call our government ‘anti-Māori and racist’ shows just how shallow and impotent the once great Labour Party of Savage, Fraser, and Kirk has become.
P.S.
Hipkins stated that the government has “reversed legislation that gives Māori a seat at the table on local councils.”
He seems to have conveniently forgotten that we are simply reinstating a referendum provision that was established as part of the Local Electoral Amendment Act 2002 – when Labour was in government.
ENDS’