Exhuming the Dancing Cossacks

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 pm, April 19th, 2013 - 24 comments
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Commenting on Labour/Greens NZPower, Steven Joyce compared it to communist regimes like North Korean and Albania. Some equally desperate commenters on the Standard have said the Labour and the Greens will once again be devastated by advertising like 1975 National’s famous “dancing cossacks.”

I don’t think so.

The dancing cossacks were part of an ad that attacked 1975 Labour’s compulsory superannuation plan.Watch it here.

If only voters hadn’t been seduced by Muldoon then we would now have a sovereign wealth fund that would be in advance of Australia’s, instead of being light years behind. Our savings and investment would be top of the world.

Steven Joyce is just another shyster like Muldoon. So is John Key.

But for Kiwi voters, its a case of “once bitten twice shy.” NZPower is good for the country.

24 comments on “Exhuming the Dancing Cossacks ”

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  1. Jeeves 1
    19 April 2013 at 9:28 pm

    Mike why do you keep calling it PowerCo? It’s NZ Power, as it’s been called in everything Labour and Greens have put out.

  2. Mike Smith 2
    19 April 2013 at 9:31 pm

    Jeeves – good point! Fixed.

  3. Sosoo 3
    19 April 2013 at 9:39 pm

    They must really be scared.

  4. Paul 4
    19 April 2013 at 9:47 pm

    Maybe someone could compile a list of all the things that are going to happen to us when Nz Power is out in place and the list of countries our energy is compared to.
    So far I count North Korea and South Korea, Zimbabwe and Albania.
    Just waiting for mention of Pol Pot, Stalin, the great Plague, the Fall of the Roman Empire, an asteroid strike……..
    Whatever next.
    As you say it’s desperate stuff, which makes one think this is a policy that should be stuck to through thick and thin. And the some more policies to roll back the neo-liberal programme,

    • Colonial Viper 4.1
      19 April 2013 at 9:57 pm

      Baathist Iraq, Gaddafi, 9/11 and Al Qaeda, Taleban, and of course Castro’s Cuba (except everyone knows that the sun is warm, the tequila cool and the cigars tasty – how bad can it be?)

  5. Colonial Viper 5
    19 April 2013 at 10:00 pm

    Mike, NZPower is a good sharp jab. Looking forwards to a devastating policy hay-maker follow up before the end of the year. The NATs are rocking back on their heels, don’t give them the opportunity to recover 🙂

    • Colonial Viper 6.1
      19 April 2013 at 10:13 pm

      It won Muldoon the election.

      • weka 6.1.1
        19 April 2013 at 10:37 pm

        Were Labour really wanting to give superannuation only to paid workers?

        • NickS 6.1.1.1
          19 April 2013 at 10:54 pm

          Nope.

          There was already an existing superannuation system, and no sign that Labour scrapped it completely. The stuff they introduced was aimed at providing long term funding for superannuation and local investment, thus reducing the amount of money the government had to spend each year on super.

          • weka 6.1.1.1.1
            20 April 2013 at 8:02 am

            So Muldoon told a bare faced lie?

            • Linz 6.1.1.1.1.1
              20 April 2013 at 12:42 pm

              He told a pack of lies. Lies and Reds under the bed. It’s all deja vu for this old chook.

            • RedLogix 6.1.1.1.1.2
              20 April 2013 at 1:12 pm

              Yes. I’m old enough (just) to remember them. You have to retcall that NZ, as part of the Western world, had been through 30 years of post-WW2 Cold War propaganda… and these ads packed a potent emotional punch. These days our reaction is laughter or snickering embarrassment.

              Or perhaps a cold chill when you realise just how much damage they caused to generations of New Zealanders.

  7. Draco T Bastard 7
    19 April 2013 at 10:09 pm

    If only voters hadn’t been seduced by Muldoon then we would now have a sovereign wealth fund that would be in advance of Australia’s, instead of being light years behind. Our savings and investment would be top of the world.

    And the opposition need to be pushing that as much as possible. National’s screwing of the economy goes back decades.

  8. RedBaronCV 8
    19 April 2013 at 10:33 pm

    Well Nact are sounding like desperate dinosaurs aren’t they. Lots of moaning and plenty of references to bygone events and ideas and anyone under 40 probably has no idea WTF they are talking about.
    Perhaps they could borrow a version of the Kim Campbell ad the Canadian tories showed 4 times to great effect.

  9. Jenny 9
    20 April 2013 at 6:30 am

    Better dead than red!

    Go back to Russia!

    A communist plot to give New Zealanders cheaper electricity has been uncovered in 21st Century New Zealand. This dastardly plot as well as allowing pensioners and other bludgers to keep their heaters on a few more nights, will cut into the profits of the newly privatised electricity owners who have shelled out good money to take the burden of government owned assets off us.

    A good ol’ fashioned red scare should wake New Zealanders up to the danger.

    My God!

    A red scare?

    Whatever next, a Mc Carthyist style witch hunt?

    Where could the SIS or the GSCB start?

    I think their work will be made a little harder by the leader of the National Party openly courting the communist leaders of China.

    So out of touch

    So last century

    Key might as well have gone back even further in time and accused the Labour Party of being in league with the devil and accuse them of sorcery.

    How lame.

    Maybe Key should try and keep up with the times and accuse Labour of being economic terrorists. I know he wanted to.

  11. Jenny 11
    20 April 2013 at 7:36 am

    ‘

    The invoking of the red scare by the National Party, allied with their plans to reward GCSB lawbreakers with even more powers, is a sure recipe for abuse.

    The red scare tactic being misused by National over power prices, makes me recall one of the uglier chapters in the history of this country’s secret service.

    The nasty and tenor of this attack which invokes the paranoia of the cold war, could easily see the recreation of the paranoid atmosphere that gave rise to respected retired civil servant Bill Sutch being hounded into an early grave.

    It was claimed by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) that Sutch had obtained official government information to give to the Soviets although no such information was ever found, and he had been out of the public service for almost a decade. Following a high-profile trial which gripped all New Zealand, a jury acquitted Sutch of the charges in February 1975.

    Sutch began to suffer ill health at about the same time as he was arrested and died six months after the trial on 28 September 1975 at Wellington, shortly after holding his just-born first grandson, Piers.

    On 9 May 2008, most of the SIS file on the Sutch and the trial were declassified. The files contained no new material information. Neither do his ASIO, FBI nor UNRRA files which have all been released. One observer remarked that had the jury seen the evidence of the files the case would have been laughed out of court. On the other hand a Top Secret 1976 report by chief ombudsman Sir Guy Powles found that SIS actions had been unlawful when they burgled and bugged his office.[5]

    The events surrounding the trial overshadowed the significance of Bill Such’s long career in the the civil service. Bill Sutch contribution to New Zealand and the world, in the establishment of UNICEF, in which he played a crucial role in a UN decision to continue with UNICEF, despite a United States desire to close it down.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Sutch

    Ben Alpers has said that some of the credit for UNICEF’s Nobel Prize for Peace should go to W. B. Sutch and New Zealand.

    The shameful high profile SIS witch hunt that broke Bill Sutch in the ’70s, invoked the earlier paranoid American McCarthy red scare of 20 years earlier, that broke the careers of many other innocent high profile people in the US.

    The shabby treatment of Bill Sutch, like earlier witch hunts, could possibly be justified because of the real menace posed by the old Soviet Union.

    But to re-invoke that era to protect the returns of Mighty River Power investors and keep power prices up, should make all New Zealanders sick to their stomachs.

    • North 11.1
      20 April 2013 at 9:47 am

      Burgling and bugging Sutch’s office ? Even in the course of his trial his house up in Brooklyn was unlawfully entered. Your common garden burglar ? Not likely given that in a house full of rare antiquities and art nothing was disturbed or stolen.

      However on the occupants’ return to the house in the evening after court, tin foil which in the morning had lined the base of a tea caddy on the kitchen bench was found on top of the tea leaves. That the tea caddy had been turned out and searched with contents then put back was signified by remnants of the contents found scattered on the bench.

      Couldn’t have been that meat pie and Playboy being sought. The tea caddy just wasn’t big enough.

  12. BrucetheMoose 12
    20 April 2013 at 10:25 am

    Rather ironic that the National are suddenly ridiculing the power proposals by Labour by comparing them to being Socialist/Communist, as if it is abhorrent and almost evil to be associated with anything of this political persuasion . Hmmm, and what country has Key been smooching up to the last few weeks? Whoops, sorry President Xi Jinping.

    • kiwicommie 12.1
      20 April 2013 at 1:37 pm

      It wouldn’t surprise me if it [National] got the GCSB and the SIS to spy on sites like the Standard, just like John’s buddy George W. Bush spied on old ladies tea parties because their messages of peace were a ‘threat to national security’. It is ironic National shouts woof, when if any party is ‘communist’, it would have to be National with its police state expansion. 😉

  13. millsy 13
    20 April 2013 at 8:24 pm

    “If only voters hadn’t been seduced by Muldoon then we would now have a sovereign wealth fund that would be in advance of Australia’s, instead of being light years behind. Our savings and investment would be top of the world.”

    The reality is that some other idiot would have pulled apart the NZ Superannuation Corporation in the 1980’s anyway.