Jim Cable
Dear Peter Goodfellow
I write to you as a longstanding National member who is now completely unhappy with both the state of, and lack of direction of, the Party and its organisation.
I’ve been seriously involved with National since Roy Maclennan’s campaign for Nelson in 1969 – then a keen young Nat who’d grown up in a National-leaning family – but who, prior to then, hadn’t been in any way involved in politics – not even at university.
Following Roy’s campaign, I was elected to Nelson’s executive committee in 1970, years later rising to become electorate chairman. I attended all National Conferences, Canterbury-Westland Divisional Conferences and Nelson-Marlborough-Tasman Sub-Divisional Conferences during those years. I stood as a Nelson candidate for selection in 1972 and again in 1975 – and, after failing in 1975, when Peter Malone became elected as candidate for Tasman, he and I virtually ran his campaign together.
By the mid-late 1980s my business interests commanded most of my available time and with National’s lustreless performance in Opposition, I gradually sidelined myself and let my membership lapse. I attended occasional local National Party meetings, but stayed uninvolved until Nick Smith persuaded me to rejoin sometime between 2005-10 – and I’ve been involved ever since.
I state the above in order that you may appreciate my frustration and disappointment with today’s direction of the Party which has strayed so far from Sid Holland’s 1936 principles as to render the present direction of the Party, unrecognisable.
Read them … and wonder just what happened to National to have tossed away so much and decline to where we are now.
“To promote good citizenship and self-reliance; to combat communism and socialism; to maintain freedom of contract; to encourage private enterprise; to safeguard individual rights and the privilege of ownership; to oppose interference by the State in business, and State control of industry”.
Sid Holland National Party Founder
After all the leftist-PC-wokeness to which the Party has constantly acquiesced, embraced and actively pandered to in recent years, National hasn’t been seen to sustain anything remotely like the same ideals.
In so many cases, the quality and capability of National MPs has dived – Bolger and Key, in particular, effecting deep-seated rot – partially occasioned by MMP’s absurd and nonsensical dictates – but more especially via its placation-demanding coalitions with NZ First and the Maori Party when it abandoned rationale and sanity, almost gleefully, in order to hold office.
In his early years Bolger had been a good MP but the concessions he permitted Peters were almost as bad as Key’s appalling failure to restrain the Maori-advantage-pushing ardour of Sharples. His efforts baselessly initiated the re-written Maori “history”, since developed and now all but institutionalised, that is mercilessly dividing us as a people and undermining the elemental substance of our nation by the unnatural expedient of seeking to Maorify us all.
Among so many other things of signal importance where National has really failed has been its demonstrable indifference to the parlous state of our children’s education. Accentuated by the 1990 abandonment of corporal punishment in schools that has completely undermined teachers’ impartation of once-solid teaching practices – and compounding that, the Green-inspired, fatuous ban of smacking in the home.
Is National no longer aware that children, early in their lives, simply have to learn that there are consequences for bad behaviour to ensure they grow into useful, contributing members of society? The results across the board are so blatantly obvious now. New Zealand’s discipline standards in education are utterly abysmal with, reportedly, as many as one-third of pupils nationally truanting on any given day. Compared to Asian countries, the quality of education rendered here is so low as to be incomparable.
It would take pages to itemise New Zealand’s failings of recent years; and National’s failure, in both government and opposition, to confront or address them has been utterly woeful. After Sir Apirana Ngata, in parliament in 1948, had praised the generosity of the 2nd Treaty settlement, to ”settle” the Treaty for a 3rd time was totally unjustifiable and unsustainable. Yet National chose to prostitute itself and the entire country to hold on to the Maori vote. Inevitably ever since, claims “under the Treaty” have never ended.
The final straw for me – and for many, many National-inclined people who share my views – has been the utterly nonsensical, Maori-pandering decision to “embed” the Treaty of Waitangi in the National Party Constitution. Do you people know nothing of our history at all?The founding documents of New Zealand are solely Queen Victoria’s Charter and Letters Patent, which any half-pie lawyer could instantly affirm for you. The Treaty is nothing more than the agreement of Maori chiefs to accept the protection and leadership of the Crown – scared as they were at the time of the very possible prospect of Nu Tirani becoming instead a colony of France.
Peter, like many, I’m now looking hard at leaving National and joining ACT. Pretend if you like, but the party organisation is no longer representative of the membership. The South Island is now almost totally ignored – and National’s backbone, the hard-working farming lobby, has been completely sidelined.
Like many other National people who’re saddened by National’s downward slide, I’d like to hear your personal views and your outlined prospects for the future we face before I make my final decision.
Note: 11 days after sending this letter Jim Cable has not even received an acknowledgement of receipt from Peter Goodfellow.
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