If You Don’t Learn from History

I am writing to express extreme disappointment at the fact that most freedom-supporting parties have failed to work together in the Tauranga by-election. This is a trial run for the 2023 national election, an election which MUST be won by some sort of freedom-supporting coalition, or the country is lost. The establishment parties have shown in their actions around the Wellington protest that they are all the enemies of the people. They all have to go.

The anti-freedom Right must be replaced by a pro-freedom Right. And the anti-freedom Left must be replaced by a pro-freedom Left. You are all needed – but you must achieve in one election next year what nobody has ever achieved before. This will take unprecedented strategic cooperation.

To be completely frank and unemotive about it, ignoring my own political leanings, out of the five freedom-supporting parties represented in Tauranga – ALCP, ONE, Outdoor, NNP and New Conservative – only two candidates have the slightest hope in this election.

There are not enough Christian conservatives for Allan Cawood to win. Nor are there enough people for whom legalisation of cannabis is of primary concern for Christopher Coker to win. Finally, in my opinion, Helen Houghton has too little profile to have a hope. All three appear to be standing simply to raise their public profiles, not in the hope of actually winning. And in so doing they are only confusing voters and making it even harder for a freedom-supporting candidate to succeed.

Sue Grey has a very large national profile. And Andrew Hollis has a large local profile in Tauranga as a city councillor. If anyone has a chance it is one of them. But even their chances are very, very slim. Like all electorate seats, this election will almost certainly be won by National or Labour (possibly ACT) unless there is an enormous groundswell of support with everyone getting behind the same candidate.

So to be completely pragmatic, the only chance of getting a freedom-supporting person into the Tauranga seat is for the minor parties to all endorse either Sue Grey or Andrew Hollis.

I know you all want to get into Tauranga to get a toehold before the 2023 election. But let’s be frank – most of you are dreaming, and if you all fail nobody is helped. You and your party will get far more public profile by backing the winner and then having them reciprocate the favour by endorsing your top candidates in their most promising seats in 2023, than by being just another losing candidate.

There are only two prominent freedom-supporting minor parties that are demonstrating humility and choosing not to contest this election – DemocracyNZ and NZFirst (I do not consider TOP to be freedom-supporting but I may be wrong if so they are a third). This humility is an enormous credit to these parties.

The Tauranga election is shaping up to be a disaster, but there is still a way out – the way of humility:

• ONE, ALCP and New Conservative need to pull out and publicly endorse either Sue or Andrew.
• NZFirst and DemocracyNZ need to publicly endorse either Sue or Andrew.
• The one out of those two who receives the fewest endorsements needs to humbly pull out of the race and endorse the other. The one who can receive the most endorsements from such a diverse party mix will have been shown to be the candidate with the widest potential support base and the greatest electoral prospects.

Do you have the humility to win this election? The parties that demonstrate humility today will be the parties worth supporting next year when it really counts.

This really is a model for collaboration in 2023, and a recipe for success for all of you – and more importantly the country.

Imagine if in 2023 ALL of you endorsed Helen Houghton for Christchurch East, Matt King for Northland, and the other party leaders of all of your parties in their preferred electorates. Imagine the robust debate that would bring to Parliament, by getting all your top people in where they can raise the issues most important to them. A parliament where Michael Appleby (ALCP) and Ted Johnston (NC) could debate cannabis legislation, and Sue Grey (O&F) and Michael Jacomb (NNP) debated environmental economic policy. A parliament where diverse opinions actually existed and select committees really listened to the people.

Legislation coming from such a parliament would be of the highest possible quality. We need all your key people in parliament (though I must stress that would be far easier to achieve under MMP if you were able to condense into fewer parties). Because only with all of you will New Zealand truly be represented and will decision-making become sound once again.

Any party that shows more ego than common sense today will not receive my vote next year and deserves nobody else’s either. But anyone demonstrating humility and cooperation deserves to be elected in a landslide.

Yours sincerely,

Samuel Dennis

Written as a former candidate for The Family Party in 2008, an election where two very similar parties (Family and Kiwi) mutually ensured each other’s failure by standing against each other and splitting the vote, who has learned from this failure and wants to avoid it occurring again at this most desperate hour. Surely everyone in all minor parties from across the political spectrum has enough experience of failure to recognise these most basic of facts.

If you don’t learn from history you are doomed to repeat it.