Sunday, August 01, 2004
The Mallard - an indegenous duck
OK - there is a lot to like in Mallard's speech on where we are as a Nation and as New Zealanders. The full text of the speech is here - but some of the highlights for My Right are quoted below:
There has to be frank and open debate on what New Zealand is about, and on the futures we can share together. Partisan and sectional politics on these issues will get us nowhere. People who sand-bag themselves into die-hard positions will not be part of creative and positive solutions. (An easy and simple enough conclusion - but needed to be said)The sad thing about the speech (and dramatic repositioning of Labour) is that it is purely political. He had the nerve to base his speech around the Orewa speech and say this, "Nor will race-based politics and race-based policy-delivery. Services must be on the basis of need and not because of a sense of race-based entitlement". Now - call me a touch partisan, but I would have thought Dr Don could fairly expect to copyright the phrase "need not race" in New Zealand politics? Mallard also states fairly early in the speech;
Michael King was passionate about New Zealand and about the emergence of a unique New Zealand identity. He rightly pointed out that for most New Zealanders, regardless of their ethnicity, home is here, Aotearoa New Zealand.
He argued that just because one group has been here longer than another does not make its members more New Zealand than later arrivals, nor does it give them the right to exclude others from full participation in national life. (A bit of name dropping never hurts)
(And most particularly, this)The Treaty was open-ended, not a straitjacket. It was a preliminary agreement to an on-going relationship under the same law and government. The terms of that relationship have changed over the past 164 years.
The National Party has dug itself into a bunker and thinks there’s a race war going on. National is the North Korea of New Zealand politics. They're spreading fear by threatening to go nuclear on race relations. Such a party cannot create a New Zealand that is unified and at peace with itself.This dig is particularly interesting in the back drop of todays lead story in the SST quoting the prospect of "civil war" (also see post below).
In what is clearly a blatantly vote recovering repositioning of Labour - My Right can't help but think Mallard would have come across a lot better, and a touch less cynical, if he had simply delivered his speech and left the politics out of it. But there are some interesting (read - irrational) responses to issues starting to flow from Level 9 of the Beehive, and how this goes down with Labour internally could definately take the gloss of this weekends Poll results.
