WINSTON KINGMAKER IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

 

To comment please open your gmail account or use my email address, FB Messenger or X (Twitter).

 

The Parliamentary Protest lights up the steps to Parliament 

The Left are often termed 'progressive' in politics - and in the Catholic Church too, where since Vatican II their presence (also called 'liberal') has become more and more of a threat to the true Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We may logically ask, to where are the leftists progressing? To hell in a handcart? Yip yip, as Jacinda memorably has said.

"If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ" - (Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI). 

Prime Minister-designate Luxon calls himself a Christian; ACT's Seymour most emphatically does not; NZ First's Winston Peters has been called a creationist. It's said that every three years NZ holds an election, and then Winston Peters chooses the next prime minister.  Could Peters, then, be a kingmaker not just for pollies but for Christ?  

While the country holds it breath in limbo, awaiting special votes, with Wellington gone as green as grass politically one wonders how hard its public servants will find it to say to their new blue bosses, "Yes, Minister".

Karl du Fresne, in the following article, says that's a matter for conjecture.

October 14 was a good day to be a conservative on either side of the Tasman. On the same day that Australian voters emphatically rejected the Voice, New Zealanders jettisoned a chaotic Labour government.

 

In a classic contest between Labour’s aggressive radicalism and the mild conservatism of the centre-right National Party, conservatism prevailed. After six years of upheaval, rancour and division, although more so in Labour’s  second term than its first, New Zealanders were so disheartened that they were prepared to put their faith in a party led by a politician still in his first parliamentary term. The clear message was that Labour had gone too far, too fast with an agenda of radical change that was incompetently managed and often not mandated.

 

Not since 1990 had a New Zealand government been ejected from office after only two terms. That too was a Labour government in a not dissimilar state of disintegration.

 

Yet the 2023 election result was not straightforward. Probably the only things that can be said with certainty are that Labour was routed and National leader Christopher Luxon will be sworn in as the new prime minister. Beyond that, the final outcome is unclear.

 

 

Christopher Luxon in the Backbencher

National will govern in coalition with the small-government, libertarian ACT party, but the election-night results gave them only a paper-thin majority and it’s possible Luxon will have to do a deal with Winston Peters, whose socially conservative New Zealand First party rebounded after being ousted in 2020 and will have a potentially decisive eight seats in the new Parliament.

At the time of writing, on the day after the election, several electorates remained undecided and special votes that remained to be counted – mostly cast by New Zealanders living overseas – had the potential to trim the National-ACT coalition’s lead.

 

Overall, though, it was an emphatic renunciation of what is misleadingly called progressivism. On election night, National won 50 seats to Labour’s 34. It was a dramatic reversal of the result in 2020 (Labour 65, National 33), when National was in disarray and before the voters’ love affair with Jacinda Ardern turned sour.

 

Taking into account ACT’s 11 seats and the New Zealand First party’s eight, the election-night result signalled a re-assertion of what might be termed traditional values. National not only won back the provincial seats it had lost in 2020, but made deep inroads into the Labour heartland in Auckland. Labour will have considered itself lucky to retain the previously impregnable inner-Auckland seat of Mt Albert, formerly held by prime ministers Ardern and Helen Clark.

 

Complicating the picture this time was the influence of smaller parties. The Greens did well, winning 14 seats with 10.8 percent of the overall party vote – the crucial factor under New Zealand’s two-vote electoral system – and securing an unprecedented three electorates, while the uncompromisingly radical Maori party further loosened Labour’s traditional grip on Maori voters by storming to victory in four of the seven designated Maori seats. I

In the process, the Maori party ousted two veteran members of parliament, including Foreign Affairs minister Nanaia Mahuta, who were considered Labour and Maori royalty.  

 

Wellington was the only metropolitan centre where the “progressive” left prevailed. As well as having a mayor who was formerly the Green party’s chief of staff, the capital now has two Green-held electorates. In the entire Greater Wellington region, only one electorate was secured by the party that will form the new government.

The city that is home to New Zealand’s army of public servants can thus be seen as significantly out of step with the rest of the country. What this says about the Luxon government’s prospects of rolling back Labour’s activist agenda is a matter of conjecture.

 

Significantly, media analysis on election night avoided any discussion of why Labour was so brutally put to the sword. The likely explanation for both the party’s humiliating defeat and the media’s reluctance to acknowledge the reason is that the policies Labour was punished for were ones that the liberal establishment, including the media, largely endorsed.

 

Ex-Justice Minister Kiri Allan does a hit and run

Throughout Labour’s six years in office, the New Zealand mainstream media have been disinclined to report anything that reflected badly on the Left. Only when Labour’s problems became too blatant to ignore – such as when a senior cabinet member crashed her ministerial car and left the scene before the police arrived, and another minister refused to disclose a conflict of interest involving shares – did the headlines turn negative.

 

Whether a Luxon-led government will act decisively to wind back Labour’s most contentious initiatives remain to be seen. National largely campaigned on bread-and-butter economic issues such as the cost of living, taxation and the price of houses. Luxon has shown no inclination to wade into the culture wars and it will likely fall to ACT and New Zealand First, if the latter party ends up in the government mix, to push back against the relentless tide of wokeism.

 

And what of Ardern? The former prime minister, now ensconced at Harvard, where she has taken up a fellowship in public leadership, was largely absent from the campaign. In the final weeks she made a brief video appearance in an obvious attempt to boost her successor Chris Hipkins’s chances, but it may have had exactly the reverse effect. Ardern’s electoral appeal, so celebrated by the international Left, has lost its lustre at home. New Zealand is over her.

 

Even Hipkins has reason to be resentful.

There's never reason to be resentful but if there were, Hipkins would have it. In spades. 

Ardern, possibly sensing the public mood was turning against Labour, unexpectedly quit while she was ahead last January and left him to clean up the mess. His long-term future must now be in doubt.

If Labour's team were not so lamentably lack-lustre his long-term future would be past. But who is there to replace him? Please don't say Ginny Anderson, the Abortionists' Friend and Champion.  

 

"Let them use nasal swabs" - Ardern as Marie Antoinette

Labour’s precipitous decline can possibly be traced to the time Ardern’s government reacted with arrogant, Marie Antoinette-style disdain to the hundreds of New Zealanders who set up a camp in the grounds of Parliament in protest at the totalitarian enforcement of restrictions during the covid pandemic.

Readers may recall Ardern's appearance on this page as the ill-fated Queen Marie Antoinette. Many would have relished a ringside seat at the guillotine. 

Happy Days at Parliament - who could forget the Gang of Three?

In a “basket of deplorables” moment, one minister (the same one caught up in the conflict of interest scandal) referred to them as a river of filth. Once regarded as a potential prime minister, he has now lost his formerly safe seat – confirmation that sometimes there is poetic justice in politics.

 

[ends]

In an editorial the NZ Herald ("considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand" - Wikipedia) - alluded to "a river of genuine fascism- an extraordinary warning". Charmant. If that's not evidence of being slightly to the right of Che Guervara, what is?

The Temptation of St Hilarion (Dominique-Louis-Féréa Papety)

 St Hilarion, on your feast day please pray for us