by frog
I am thoroughly sick of hearing failed National Party Leader Don Brash’s world view. It is lamentably and consistently the “3 R’s”: Ronald (Reagan), Roger (Douglas) and Racism.
Brash covered all fields in his latest Return to Orewa effort, setting out the same divisive economic and racial agenda that back in 2005 lost him the chance of ever being Prime Minister.
He even went as far as to question whether the Maori Party should be allowed to exist. While I have no great affinity with the Maori Party’s support for a Government that is reducing environmental protection, reducing workers’ rights and reducing social support for the vulnerable, Brash’s questioning the Maori Party’s right to exist is a step leap too far. It cuts at the very heart of democratic principles, and suggests that people should be denied their democratic rights to organise as a political party.
What comes next? Ban the Green Party?
The upside of Brash’s speech is that it was to National Party faithful. While John Key is publicly relaxed, he will privately be spewing. Brash set out in technicolour the agenda that some in National would like to move much more quietly towards – deregulation, privatisation, and denial of indigenous rights.
I suspect whoever in the National Party cleared Brash to deliver this speech will be (very quietly) getting his or her butt kicked right now.
But there may be an upside. That would be the divisive impact Brash’s speech will have had among the National Party faithful, and the marginalization of Brash and his extremist economic and racial views by the National Party hierarchy.
I hope, but am not that confident, it is finally bedtime for Bonzo Brash.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Society & Culture by frog on Tue, November 30th, 2010
Tags: Don Brash. National Party, john key, racism, Rogernomics, Ronald Reagan
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Ruthenasia Richardson!
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Mind you, Key could also make trouble and stop Brash drinking from the public teat, by shutting down the 2025 Taskforce.
Womder when/if ACT will ask Brash to join them. He seems a perfect fit for them.
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Scott, the problem is that Brash’s 2005 Taskforce gives Key the ability to appear centrist and reasonable, unlike the “far-right idiot Brash” who is spouting a pure neo-liberal agenda.
Key, or at least many in his Government, would like to go the same place as Brash. But most of them realise it should be done by stealth, rather than promoting the honest but vile agenda Brash does.
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What a load of piffel Frog.Brash said nothing racist…it was entrenched state backed racism he opposes…and most of the decent people in NZ agree with him.It was wrong in Apartheid South Africa and its just as wrong here.Maori are not some sort of super race who have special rights over the rest of us nor are they inferior in any way…they are just human beings with the same rights as the rest of us…no more or less.
As to the Maori party he never said they should be banned..just that its a disgusting collectivist example of racism that would not be tolerated in any other form in NZ.If a European party was formed it would be condemmed as obsence and rightly so…although it would still have the right to exist…people having the right to be wrong and make poor choices.
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@Credo 8:44 PM
Brash said:
What Brash is missing is that the Maori Party is not a “racially based” political party. It is a Party founded on values that many New Zealanders believe in.
If the Green Party didn’t exist, I would be a member of the Maori Party, even though I have red hair, pale skin, and am of Celtic descent.
Why? Because I share their values – although I tend to think they (and let’s distinguish between the grass roots and the MPS, and Hone Harawira among the MPs excepted) have sold those values out for little practical political gain in their agreement to support a National-led Government.
But if the Green Party didn’t exist, the Maori Party is (despite my reservations over its current political alignment) where I would be, because it is the Party that next fits my values, regardless of any of your nonsense about race Credo.
But I would still be trying to steer it well clear of the Nats. Too many racists and neoliberals like Brash there for me!
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Brash is a continuing and integral part of National Party strategy. Far from being an embarrassment over the Exclusive Brethren affair, he is welcomed with applause at party conferences, and we can expect to see him on more well paid ‘task forces’.
While the Maori seats were consistently delivering Labour MPs, the National Party was keen to abolish them (the Maori seats!)
Haven’t heard that one for a while. But if the MP implodes over the F&S legislation, and Labour wins those seats next time, we might hear it again.
The Maori Party are discovering the brutal realities of power. Having delivered nothing to their people so far, they will be cut ruthlessly adrift by National as soon as the F&S legislation is sorted, one way or another.
Far from being kingmakers after the next election, the MP may be anathema to both major parties, for whom a ‘grand coalition’ is not at all inconceivable.
2011 will be an interesting year.
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Technicolour yawn!
[frog: The terminological juxtaposition over those two sentences was deliberate, and the association you made was intended. A chocolate frog to you, Todd, for being the first to pick it up. Well done, very quick off the mark.]
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As Geoff said it would be interesting should Brash put up his own party to test public opinion.
How far would he get? How far would these far right neo-liberal parties get without hanging on the coat tails or infiltrating the main parties?
Would there be any prizes for guessing as to which party I am referring to?
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Apart from opposing Maori electorate seats Brash also supports SM representation for the party list.
This system does not ban the MP, just reduce the number of its MP’s to 1 (or 2 at most) – given 40 SM seats in a 120 seat parliament (2.5% of the party vote for each SM position).
PS – Maori are those descended from Maori ancestors, there is no race test involved.
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I agree with Scott.. maybe Brash would be better off in the ACT party. Whilst he is delivering to the Nat. faithful, some of his comments sound even further to the right (Hide/Douglas ?) inspired.
The whole issue of abolishing Maori seats & even banning a ‘Maori Party’, seems to contradict the essence of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (a partnership, NOT assimilation). Kia-ora
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The poor man’s clearly gone crackers. I do recall reading a description of his life after he was dumped as National Party boss, and he seemed to lead a very isolated existence.
His belief that the Maori Party is racially-based, despite having Pakeha members and candidates, not to mention mixed-race MPs and a political culture and set of policies that arguably owes more to European traditions than Maori, bears out his inability to analyse anything beyond the bounds of his own narrow experience.
He claims the Maori Party’s aims of ‘partnership’ between Maori and Pakeha is in contravention of the Treaty of Waitangi (the Treaty has nothing to do with ‘partnership’ – but it’s a stretch to say it contravenes it) and that the Treaty merely guarantees Maori property rights, while simultaneously attacking legislation intended to entrench Maori property rights. These sort of logic leaps are typical of nut bar conspiracy theorists.
Finally he ends with a diatribe against democracy: “Leaders come to office with a vision for what their country could be. Great leaders take people with them in the direction of that vision.” It’s tempting to say ‘Achtung!’ but maybe ‘Gung Ho!’ is more acceptable.
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I listened to Don Brash defending his “task force” on the radio recently and if it is the same interview that is being referred to above then I think that people are missing the main point. It seems to me that Brash is the little boy in the famous children’s story who points out that the Emporer has no clothes. One of John Key’s principle election planks was to “catch up” with Australia. No thinking person believed that that was possible but many others bought into the illusion. Brash and his group were charged with creating an action plan to make it happen – in other words Brash was asked to do the impossible (certainly in political terms).
I am certainly no fan of Don Brash but I think that he has given an honest appraisal of the situation with respect to “catching up” and has revealed the stupidity of the whole notion. We should be lauding his findings.
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Fair comment Yogi that Brash was handed an impossible task, but when you look at the “solutions” he comes up with, they are more of the neo-liberal policies that were implemented between 1984 and 1999 when most of the blowout in the gap with Australia occurred, and which I would suggest are the the most substantial cause of that gap.
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Toad, I would suggest that the cause of the gap was far deeper than just the reforms. If we look at how many people were wastefully employed prior to 1984, for instance, you can already see a massive pool of labour becoming available once those state owned entities were made efficient through the privatisation process. When you make 100,000 people unemployed, of course it is going to have a depressing impact on wages.
The Australians never had that massive pool of wastefully employed people, and they haven’t gotten rid of them to a similar degree either (just look at the Sydney rail system).
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@john-ston 10:01 AM
I wasn’t suggesting that the Muldoonist policies of “make work” (and the wage-price freeze) were’nt a contributing factor as well. But if the disestablishment of “make work” had been done slower, and the creation of real jobs incentivised, the subsequent adverse economic impact would have been far less.
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Perhaps my comments weren’t precise enough. I was referring specifically to Brash’s claim that to catch up with Australia the economic realities are that we need annual growth of at least 2% per annum MORE THAN Australia’s annual growth rate for whatever the time period that Key told the electorate would be required. Key’s own man is telling us it is not being achieved (and won’t of course). It is Key’s credibility that must be placed under scrutiny.
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Toad, it is pretty difficult to do things much more slowly when you are drowning in debt. I agree that it would have been much better to have done the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s at a much slower pace like what happened in Australia, but we had a government that was tettering at the edge of bankruptcy – at one point, we needed to draw down on diplomat’s credit cards.
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