Roughan on Peters
April 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am by David FarrarVery good analysis from John Roughan:
Winston Peters says every Chinese leader understands his position. I believe him. Winston personifies everything they fear in elective democracy.
China’s leaders see free elections as an invitation to egocentric individuals to play politics for personal gratification rather than social improvement. They genuinely think that where multi-party competition is permitted it will only produce politicians like Winston.
Bingo. Dead on the money.
It must be hard for people with no experience of free elections to believe that in educated democracies such as ours the vast majority of voters in fact are not seduced by politicians like Winston. It is hard enough to convince some in this that all politicians are not like him.
This is important. The vast majority of MPs, from all parties, are sincerely dedicated to improving NZ, and believe their policies will do so.
A tiresome popular misconception, assiduously cultivated by himself over the years, holds that all politicians except him are unprincipled and self-serving. The truth is exactly the reverse. Winston is unique but not for the reasons his admirers think. Just about everybody else in our Parliament is there with a sense of the social good.
Again, Peters is near unique in his populism without conviction or belief in anything but that he should be in power.
That is what we all thought. But the reason he gave this week was quite different. The agreement was too soft, he said, the tariff reductions too slow. He was hoping for better.
Bullshit. Phil Goff’s word is the only apt description for Winston’s politics. Our tariff phase-downs might be faster than China’s in this deal but those China has agreed to are rapid by comparison with New Zealand’s voluntary reductions over the past 20 years, which Winston of course opposed. He has opposed every important economic step the country has taken during his time in Parliament. If he operates by a principle beyond personal survival it is simple conservatism: do nothing drastic, nothing much is wrong, leave us alone.
Peters reasons for not voting for the FTA are bizarre. The Greens have a sincere opposition to the FTA- to be blunt they don’t like trade as it is bad for the environment.
But Peters says the tariffs in China are not coming down fast enough. So his solution is to do nothing, as if that will be better for our exporters!! He complains that we reduced tariffs unilaterally in the 80s and 90s. Well yes we did, and now have the lowest unemployment in the developed world because we have a modern competitive economy. But can no one see through the faulty logic of complaining we have already lowered our tariffs, yet refusing to vote for something which will lower barriers for our exporters?
Yet both major parties now plainly hope he will return. Since they have to deal with minor parties to govern under MMP, they both would sooner deal with personal egos than principled parties. It is easier to satisfy a Peters or a Dunne than Act or Maori or the Greens.
Oh I would not say they “hope” he will return. Personally I would take a principled party you can trust over a politician you can never trust, any day of the week. But parties don’t get much of a say in who they get to deal with – the voters do, and then you see how a Government can be formed.
Each side at different times has been able to finesse Winston with a sinecure. National made him Treasurer, a position that didn’t exist before or since. In that role he was an impeccable presenter of the monetarist principles he had damned up and down the country for the previous 10 years.
And he sold Auckland Aiport!!!
Now he is Foreign Minister for everything but trade, which seems rather like being admiral of everything except the ships.
Superb analogy.
But to give him his due, his flexible ego has made him a force for stability in our new system. He was genuinely upset when Jenny Shipley could not maintain a coalition with him, and timed his decision on Labour’s China deal this week to ensure he did not undermine it.
Here I disagree. People have short memories. Peters killed the Coalition by staging a walkout from Cabinet, six hours *after* the dispute over Wellington Airport had been solved. And running newspaper ads attacking the agreement the day after the PM has signed it looks like undermining it to me.
Nevertheless, our politics would be better without him. He has been a misleading voice in national debates, a negative influence on public confidence in the country and those who genuinely serve it, a mischievous, evasive, obnoxious muck-raker with the charm of an attention-seeking child.
Poetry, sheer poetry.
He has fooled his admirers for too long. May this be the year that voters wash him out of our public life.
Hear hear.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Yes, but John Armstrong’s commentary is far more balanced and fair: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10503658
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 10:21 am
“Poetry, sheer poetry”
Vote:Indeed!
Wonder how the (new) Bard of New Lynn would turn that into deathless poetry?
April 12th, 2008 at 10:24 am
jocko, I don’t think that the (new) Bard of New Lynn needs any encouragement! The words ask and you shall receive come to mind…
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Winston reminds me of a 1930′s US Senator from Louisiana, a man called Huey Long.
Vote:The kingpin of populism and that’s about all. Saying what the mob are thinking, playing the lowest card. Just look at Peter’s arrogance and his attitude to interviewers.
Winston and his gang of misfits are playing on the susceptibilities of his blue rinse brigade who have no idea whether they are living in 2008 or 1908. And as for Winston’s Gold Card ! What a laugh and joke !
I believe the Nationals should state quite openly they are having nothing to do with that mob !
April 12th, 2008 at 10:40 am
YEEEEESS, HEAR, HEAR, DPF and John Roughan. Never seen anything this good from John Roughan before now. I will never forgive Winnie for pulling the plug on the Shipley-led Nats. I reckon history would have been completely different had most of the last few years been a head-to-head confrontation between Hullun and Big Jen.
Vote:And I will never forgive Winnie for derailing the health sytem reforms of that time, ushering in the last 9 years of ever-deteriorating status quo in the health system. Oh YEAH, the reforms would have resulted in worse outcomes than what we’ve had, YEEAAHHH, RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am
“Winston personifies everything they fear in elective democracy.”
What crap. The chinese commie party exists for no other purpose that for the personal benefit of senior party members.
The commies don’t herd North Korean refugees back to the gulags and death because they don’t understand democracy.
Winston is getting worse press than the scum that keeps North Korea going. Fucking unbelievable but it does explain how North Korea can exist.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 10:52 am
and the next polls will show that his trajectory is up..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Peters continues to survive. ..and all those who want him gone can’t come up with a way to acheive that. From the Nats, a bit of reticence on the trade deal would have stolen Winston’s thunder. Now he rides again, and the election descends again into absolute farce. What a carnival of fools.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 10:58 am
No wonder politicians rate alongside debt collectors and gang members as a respected profession.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Al-Girta, isn’t it noticeable that there are NO lasting totalitarian gummints that are economic libertarians that do their countries a power of good? Its only socialists who use force and murder to get power.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
“there are NO lasting totalitarian gummints” ……….
when good western governments stand up to them.
Yeah yeah China gonna be this big open peace loving country what in 40 years time. Yeah maybe. But how many people got to die in the interim with nobody held to account. And the commie systems are in place for it to swing back the other way as well. It anit a done deal and there aint the checks in place.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
# PhilBest Add karma Subtract karma +0 Says: April 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am: “Its only socialists who use force and murder to get power.”
Er, Pinochet, Franco, Somoza, etc, etc, etc.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
phil-the-inferior never lets facts get in the way of his deluded ‘gobs’..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
“in educated democracies such as ours”
Oh puh-lease….
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
“Er, Pinochet, Franco, Somoza,”
Haw haw, as if those few names could ever be written on the same wall as the heroes of socialist literature, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, responsible for the murder of a 100 million if not twice that. Just the same old commie propaganda.
Big government totalitarianism is the real issue, and that’s the circumstance that every socialist lusts for. You just don’t get it do you Jafaboy? Its your support for totalitarianism that earns you my contempt. The way you’ve wrecked NZ’s democracy. National or Labour, now different by such a small degree it just doesn’t matter.
Here’s the message Jaffaboy – if its big government, I don’t need it. That’s why you and I will never get along. Its your ideas that gave power to all of those named above, and for that I can never forgive you or any of your ilk- meaning those who see big government as the desired political circumstance and always, bigger government as the preferred outcome.
Get out of my life socialist, stop forcing your religion down my throat and understand I do not share your pathological adoration of the state or your gormless subjugation to the dated and unworkable ideas of a failed clapped out German academic. I don’t need you, and I don’t need Helen Klark, or any of your interfering regulating sanctimonious smug preaching evangelistic acolytes. Get out of my life, and stop stealing the fruits of my labour. Leave me alone.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
““in educated democracies such as ours” Oh puh-lease”
Damn right- made me choke too…
If only. If only we could free the education system from the socialist totalitarians…
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
OK, OK, I used the term “socialists” in contrast to ECONOMIC LIBERTARIANS. Perhaps it was a bit narrow, but nevertheless it covers around 99% of the murder-by-regime that occurred in the last 100 years. Furthermore, without EXCEPTION it has been a disaster for the well-being of the people concerned, and without EXCEPTION it has been WORSE than the evil it replaced or vanquished. Imagine Spain or Chile having turned out like North Korea or Cuba.
It is an illustration of the adage that the means end up defining the end, rather than the end justifying the means. Economic libertarians, for some reason, do not murder their way into power anywhere at any time, no matter how fervently they believe in the “end” of their ideology. Socialists, on the other hand, both believe fervently in an ideology, and have again and again stooped to the lowest depths ever reached by humanity in the pursuit of it – with the most disastrous results ever achieved by humanity.
It is a measure of the sheer hypocrisy of the leftists that dominate the MSM, that Pinochet is so demonised, and Fidel Bloody Castro is so idolised, when he is a mass-murderer pure and simple, killed exponentially more of his population, and took them back to semi-starvation conditions, conditions far worse and far more oppressive than anything that had existed under Batista. Same with the Bolshies, same with Mao…………
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Our new friends the commie thug government gives NZ access to the China markets and the funny thing is the Laborites and Gnats say China human rights record its not the best but consol themselves with it’s a free market decision. Long live the free market!!
If only they would apply the same free market reasoning to legislation and governance in NZ. Labour and National could standards get any lower?
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Redbaiter Add karma Subtract karma –1 Says: April 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm “Er, Pinochet, Franco, Somoza,” Haw haw, as if those few names could ever be written on the same wall as the heroes of socialist literature, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, responsible for the murder of a 100 million if not twice that. Just the same old commie propaganda.
Firstly, Redbaited, I was responding to the statement, “Its only socialists who use force and murder to get power.” I could have gloated about the awesome ignorance that resulted in that little misspeak, but choose not to. After I completely rebutted that little gem of right-wing drivel with just a few of the first examples that came to mind, you follow with your usual incoherent rant.
I’m not going to play any number games, as I think most people find that morally repugnant, but I am happy to say that I never supported ANY of the communist dictators you mention, or Hitler, who is only considered a socialist by right-wing nutbars such as yourself. (And, yes, I know what “Nazi” stands for.)
But here’s a far-from-complete list of some of the murderers and torturers supported by the US over the years:
Idi Amin (Uganda), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Suazo Cordova (Honduras), Ngo Dinh Diem (viet Nam), Papa Doc & Baby Doc Duvalier (Haiti), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador), Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire), Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala), Mohammad Revi Pahlevi (Iran), George Papadopoulolis (Greece), Park Chung Hee (South Korea), Augusto Pinochet (Chile), various Somozas (Nicaragua), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), General Suharto (Indonesia), Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (Dominican Republic). Other especially brutal US-supported governments but that could arguably be said to be elected included various regimes in recent decades in Guatemala and El Salvador, the latter specialising in priest-killing.
Now, would you care to repudiate the United States’ policy of installing and/or propping up this fairly big ragbag of murderous dictators over the years.
Oh, and you possibly weren’t aware of the United States’ support for the Khmer Rouge after the Communist Vietnamese government expelled them from Cambodia. PhilBest isn’t the only one in need of a history lesson.
Edit: But, PhilBest, I was always given to believe that Pinochet was an “economic libertarian”. Have you no clue at all about how he came to power?
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
“Now, would you care to repudiate the United States’ policy of installing and/or propping up this fairly big ragbag of murderous dictators over the years.”
Wow, and you have the damn nerve to label my submissions as incoherent? Even if your claims were true, (and most of them are just the SAME OLD SAME OLD ONE SIDED EXTREME LEFT WING GOEBELLIAN PROPAGANDA that is reproduced by you here only as a result of your politically one dimensional educational experience), what the fuck has what we’re talking about got to do with any allegiances the US, (Democrats or Republicans) might engage in as international alliances develop and unfold throughout history??
…and are you actually so gauche naive and politically ignorant as to propose that the US is not like most other Western civilizations, just another basket case nation since socialism has become ascendant there?? What cave do you live in in what solar system in what distant galaxy??
You put a lot of work into that screed of bigoted propaganda, but why? Its not even close to the issue. The issue is totalitarian socialism and its big government underpinnings. We’re talking about competing ideologies. Here’s the guts. Redbaiter’s ideas on government, (keeping it small and weak), would never have resulted in the powerful entities that have slaughtered butchered jailed harassed raped tortured thieved regulated and generally oppressed people and retarded the growth of civilization for decade after decade and that all stem from the same ideology, ie yours Jafaboy in your evangelical promotion of the delusional and socially destructive idea that government is good, and that it should grow endlessly until it consumes all and everything. Jezuz, learn to read and comprehend man.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
cut and paste farra
Vote:farra i see you obsession with Winston goes on, and good reason my friend:
you will not get the numbers to govern, without help,
it is not like me to point out the obvious but why dont you get a coalition with Green,
it will hardly hurt at all since the environmental facts is so obvious.
If yous would be that bright farra you could have a coalition for a decade
you do not need to think about Winston at all or post him,
the partisans are here for good farra, you can hand the government back to socialism or you can get real,
April 12th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Brilliant.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
DPF:
You’re more optimistic than I, David. A complete absence of adherence to principle and integrity in the pursuit or retention of power is becoming more the rule than the exception in Parliament.
While the ire of most commenters here is reserved for some of the few exceptions to that rule – the Sue Bradfords or Michael Cullens of politics who’d rather nail themselves to an unpopular policy than give an inch, I can at least begrudgingly admire their willingness to sacrifice personal popularity to their beliefs, while still disagreeing vehemently with those ideas.
But they’re not typical of our MPs. More and more they are exemplified by people like Peter Brown (to be fair, only the most recent example) who – while they may have a simplistic collection of ill-founded opinions and prejudices – wouldn’t know a principle if it bit them in the arse, and who are prepared to say or do anything simply to become or remain an MP.
I don’t know what saddens me more – seeing someone like Winston, who once had firm principles, abandon them entirely or to know that so many of those queuing to take his place have none to abandon.
Edit: Neil draws the comparison between Peters and Huey Long, saying:
Simply “saying what the mob are thinking” isn’t inherently wrong. In fact we have what is laughably called “representative democracy” because that is precisely what our politicians are meant to do.
There are far too many who feel it is their job to tell “the mob” what to think and then, if they cannot obtain popular support, to ride roughshod over their wishes.
Vote:April 12th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Winnie will always be the spinster, well pass his used by date he is now a whore stuck on the street corner, he does tricks because he is addicted, his addiction is power. To many times the bridesmaid, to many times the finally dance and home for “drinks”. I guess this is what happens when principles are put aside, his soul is up for crabs, the highest offer takes it.
Vote:April 13th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
To all Greens
Trade is good for the environment.
It takes less energy to produce a lamb in NZ and export it to the UK than it does for the UK to produce the lamb themseleves.
And vice versa for other products.
Trade saves enegry and the planet.
Vote: