“I’ve got to be honest to all of your listeners. This is a fantastic country. This is the best country on planet Earth, but we have to determine we want to realise our maximum potential economically, socially and environmentally, and we want to be a place everyone can flourish. And if you want to have a go and you want to make something of yourself, we don’t just do bottom-feeding and just focus on the bottom, we focus on people who want to be positive and ambitious and aspirational and confident, right?”
Christopher Luxon, National Party Leader, NZ
Luxon received a bit of pushback on that statement, offensive as it initially seemed to be. But isn’t it time we clarified exactly who the bottom-feeders are?
When asked, Luxon couldn’t really give a definitive answer about whether he was referring to beneficiaries or not. He said he wasn’t – but he didn’t tell us who he was referring to either. The closest we got to an answer was:
“We need to be more confident, ambitious, aspirational, positive, optimistic going forward. And so we need to celebrate success and achievement as much as anything.”
Luxon’s was a politician’s response if ever I heard one. If he won’t define them then I’ll take a stab at it. I’ll put my neck out and say that I think I know who they are.
See, there are two kinds of people in the world: Top-breeders, and Bottom-feeders. Jacinda Ardern wasn’t altogether wrong in suggesting that there is a class system in New Zealand. That was offensive too, but in a different way, and for a different reason.
In terms of Luxon’s comment on the class system blatantly apparent in our societal structure, what we actually have is this: our wannabe elite, with all the pompous self-importance that they like to give themselves – who would like you to think that they are the top-breeders. They think that they are superior to everyone else (everyone else being the ‘lower classes’, the working class and a ‘river of filth’) and they think that gives them a special status to demean everything that doesn’t fit with whatever their ‘Narrative of the Day’ is.
But let me tell you how I view it. It comes down to where you are and what you’re doing. If your snout is stuck in someone else’s trough, or is snuffling its way around someone else’s jacksy for approval – then you are quite literally a Bottom-feeder. And guess what? That’s the ‘elite’.
Luxon was more right than he thought. He probably did not realise who was going to be identified as a bottom-feeder because his nose was stuck in the trough or snuffling… well, you get my point.
As Ardern put it when describing the class system: “Yip, yip – that’s exactly what it is – yip.” Daft woman.
In this topsy-turvy world in which we find ourselves, the hard-working, honest to goodness, average, every day, working-class Kiwi with solid ethics based on justice, fairness, and national pride is actually the Top-breeder. These are the people we want to see more of.
We want to see them getting educated, holding down jobs, finding their soul mates, getting married, having and raising children, being successful, owing their own homes, retiring in comfort, and being the stabilising and guiding force in the communities they build upon along the way. Because, in reality, those are the people who are positive and ambitious and aspirational and confident, right?
That is the New Zealand we want. And that is the New Zealand we shall have. Come hell or high water, I will not rest until the others are all but washed up on an island somewhere else in the Pacific. They can bottom feed and wallow in their own poop to their heart’s content, just as long as it’s not on my street.