Friday, March 05, 2004
Brash hits back with reason not rhetoric
Don Brash has not enjoyed as much coverage of his speech to the Northern Club compared to the secular one's rant, from the pulpit....
However, the Doctor's speech is now on Scoop, and I would encourage Brash's detractors to read it, and respond.
On a slightly different tack. I may be misreading the mood - but I think a part of Brash's popularity stems from NZ'ers growing up and becoming tired of the we know best nanny state attitude of the past 5 years. Brash has often declared that he is not interested in personal insults and childish, political and simplistic attacks. I for one like his under hyped (but carefully conceived and considered) approach of, 'this is what I think, this is what I will do, if you like it - vote for me'. It certainly beats the references to 'gross' 'cynical' (insert your own reference to irony here) and 'unpleasant' we get from the PM. I'm a grown up Helen, let me decide whether I think they are or not. Anyways - the speech in full is here, a few tastes below;
"The behaviour of the other parties in the House has been an amusing study in political repositioning: United Future seems to have been attempting to climb out of the Foreshore and Seabed waka they had only recently boarded; NZ First has been trying to paddle on both sides of the waka, but in the House it seems to have a liaison of convenience with Labour; the Green Party, at least, has stuck to its guns, and seems prepared to go down fighting on the whole bi-cultural, partnership package, and we can respect them for having the courage of their convictions; while the ACT Party has been consistent in its support of the views I expressed at Orewa.
A number of newspapers spectacularly misjudged their audience. A major Sunday newspaper, in comparing me to AustraliaÂs Pauline Hanson, launched one of the most extraordinary exercises in second-rate muckraking journalism that I have ever witnessed. Presumably this idea was not conceived in the circulation department, because the polls showing wide public support for the Orewa speech implied that the headline was also an attack on most of the readership of the paper. The subsequent editorial attempts to defend this new low in the standards of New Zealand journalism were so lame as to be laughable. One can have only contempt for the mind that conceived that front page spread, and sympathy for those journalists that were unwittingly associated with it.
The critics who have focused obsessively on these Ârace-based funding details give the overwhelming impression of a group of people who cannot see the wood for the trees. Fortunately that does not apply to the general public, because the plain fact of the matter is that the public is more concerned with the parade of race-based political correctness we have endured over the past decade or more:
· cultural safety in nursing
· bilingual rebranding of the public sector
· Treaty issues getting tangled up in health and safety audits
· claims of taniwhas being used to block developments
· consultations with iwi being required in relation to resource management consents, and even to scientific research in universities
· the anomaly of Maori Parliamentary seats being expanded into local body politics and now to the representation on PHOs
· and so on in a relentless torrent.
Can we really believe that this simple 19th century treaty, which focused on sovereignty, property rights and citizenship, also has something to say about todayÂs SOEs and national parks, todayÂs schools and universities, how we go about approving or declining building permits, what science we should study, or how we should regard the new frontier of genetic science?
This is simply madness, and it must be stopped. "
Odds on an Election in 2004 anyone?
