National’s use of the dog whistle and its hatred of UN conventions

• mickysavage
• 3 years ago
• Categories: International, Judith Collins, national, racism, same old national, treaty settlements, United Nations
• Tags: te tiriti o waitangi

Who would be leader of the opposition?

It is quite a unique position in New Zealand politics.

You are handed a bull horn.  Comments are sought from you daily about all sorts of positions and the media convention is that agreement with the proposal will get you nowhere.  You have to have an opposition statement ready.  Otherwise you are not newsworthy.

And after an election spanking you have to repair your party and talk to the base.

Whether Wellington likes it or not it is the rank and file members of a party that hold it together.  Without them the party will fade into irrelevancy.

And so there is a tendency for parties to talk to their base and respect their views early on in the election cycle.

For the Labour Party this is fine.  Our base is interested in solving child poverty, doing something about climate change, creating a better, more inclusive education system, and redressing attacks on the Trade Union movement that have contributed so significantly to poverty.

For National different issues arise.  They do not like ethnic diversity, they have always thought the Treaty of Waitangi was a hindrance to good farming practices and they have a hatred of the United Nations.

Their MPs buy into this quite often.

There was a startling example two years ago when National set up a petition against the UN Global Compact on Migration.

Three months later the Christchurch Mosque massacre happened.  One of the motivations for the killer was an intense hatred of migrants.  Shortly after it happened an emotional junior staffer took the petition down.  Clearly he had a conscience.  But National tried to manufacture a false narrative that it had already taken the petition down but to their embarrassment this was quickly disproven.

And more recently Judith Collins has used the bull horn of the opposition leader’s office to amplify a well honed dog whistle.  There was her effort a week ago to try and claim that te Tiriti o Waitangi was nothing more than a restatement of National’s pro business principles.

Yesterday she responded to trenchant criticism by repeating the same racist trype.  Judith really believes in giving back double.

Her speech to the Lower North Island Regional Conference contained these gems all apparently because of the He Puapua report:

• “The Government plans to give the separate Māori Health Authority the power of veto over the national health system.”
• “The Government’s freshwater reforms have embedded Te Mana o te Wai as a ‘fundamental concept’.”
• “The Government is consulting on a New Zealand history curriculum for students aged five to 15. The proposed curriculum is shaped around the study of the consequences of colonisation and the effects of power.”
• “The Government has, without consultation and against official advice, passed a law allowing councils to urgently create Māori wards for the 2022 local government elections.”
• “The Prime Minister and David Parker met with five iwi organisations and the Labour Māori Caucus in December, and at this meeting a commitment was made for the Government to work with iwi on freshwater and resource management reform.”
• “The Waitangi Tribunal has, in just in the past few weeks, made a decision that we must have a separate child welfare service for Māori in order to comply with Article 2 of the Treaty. Kelvin Davis is now considering this.”
• “The Department of Conservation is currently undertaking a review of how it can give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. DOC is having hui with iwi on draft recommendations.”

What is this He Puapua report?

It is a report setting out a panel’s view of what is required to implement the UN convention on the Rights of Indigenous People.

When did New Zealand sign up to this clearly communist inspired takeover of the Western world?

April 2010.

This is where it gets really interesting.  The fifth Labour Government did not want to sign the treaty.  In 2007 then Minister of Maori Affairs Parekura Horomia said this:

There are four provisions we have problems with, which make the declaration fundamentally incompatible with New Zealand’s constitutional and legal arrangements.” Article 26 in particular, he said, “appears to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous. This ignores contemporary reality and would be impossible to implement.”

But National reversed the decision and supported the convention.  At the UN Maori Party leader and part of Government Pita Sharples said this:

New Zealand’s support for the Declaration represents an opportunity to acknowledge and restate the special cultural and historical position of Maori as the original inhabitants – the tangata whenua – of New Zealand. It reflects our continuing endeavours to work together to find solutions and underlines the importance of the relationship between Maori and the Crown under the Treaty of Waitangi. Its affirmation of longstanding rights supports and safeguards that ongoing relationship and its proclamation of new aspirations gives us all encouragement and inspiration for the future.

I sense a pattern here.  In 2016 National agreed to the precursor of the UN Global Compact on Migration.  Then when it saw a political opportunity to engage in racist grandstanding it did so.  The same with the He Puapua report.  Except even more strongly so.

The bull horn of the opposition leader’s office should be used carefully and respectfully.  Judith shows no inclination of doing either.