The National Party really can’t catch a trick at the moment, but most of the problems they are having are self-inflicted. God knows what possessed former leader and Prime Minister John Key to go on television and mount a defence of one of the most brutal anti-democratic regimes in the world. The fact that John Key is continuing to shill for Chinese interests tells you everything you need to know about his commitment to this country, and that some things never change.
Here is what the Daily Mail thinks about Key and his shilling for China:
Former New Zealand prime minister John Key has urged the government to stay close to China to have any chance at influencing the superpower’s behaviour.
Mr Key preached engagement with Beijing in a long interview to TVNZ’s Q+A program on Sunday, a rarity since standing down in 2016 after eight years in office.
He lamented US-China relations had ‘deteriorated considerably’ since his time in office, and dismissed Australia’s tough talking approach to China under Scott Morrison as counterproductive.
Mr Key also lashed US House speaker Nancy Pelosi over her visit to Taiwan this week, suggesting it was selfish and high-risk.
‘It was reckless, if you want to be kind. It was provocative and it was actually dangerous,’ he said.
‘Everyone knows that the third-most important elected official in the United States turning up on Taiwanese territory, that is poking the bear.’
Amid growing tensions between China and the US over Taiwan, Mr Key said he wanted ‘everyone to take a calm, deep breath’.
‘Literally tens, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders’ jobs and incomes rest on the fact that our largest trading partner is China,’ he said.
‘We sell a lot of goods there. There’s a lot of investment there. There’s a lot of trade.
‘To have that potentially disrupted – let’s be blunt – in a very fragile world … is this another dimension that we want to add?’
Mr Key also declined repeated invitations to describe President Xi Jinping an authoritarian leader.
Daily Mail
Make no mistake, John Key is acting as either a dupe or an agent of China. He is actively seeking a board position at a Chinese Bank. He covets that more than he coveted his knighthood. He isn’t at all interested in what is good for New Zealand; he’s interested in what is good for John Key.
He will hate me drawing attention to his motives, but as he said to my old man on the phone one day…”no hard feelings”, John.
But Key is dead wrong about losing Chinese business. We learned from the Covid pandemic that we can easily sustain a dramatic drop off in business. If we stopped trading with them it would be annoying, but not fatal. Key is labouring under the false premise that trade will change China. That’s bullshit, China will never change.
Another example of an own goal and self-inflicted misery in the National Party is their continued propensity to select drop kicks with shady behaviours. Clearly their candidate selection procedures aren’t up to scratch otherwise Sam Uffindel wouldn’t have got through. But he did and so the Media Party gets to dance on National’s corpse again.
The National Party’s newest MP, Sam Uffindell, was asked to leave his exclusive boarding school after viciously beating a younger student late at night.
Uffindell only offered the man an apology last year, 22 years after the attack, and nine months before he publicly announced his political aspirations.
He says the timing of his decision to say sorry is not linked to his decision to begin a career in politics, but that the incident had been “nagging” at him, and he wanted to atone.
“It was one of the silliest, stupidest things I’ve ever done. I really regretted it, I do really regret it still,” Uffindell said.
The victim, who was 13 years old at the time, was left with severe bruising and significant trauma.
Police were not involved. Instead, Uffindell was disciplined alongside three other teenagers who joined in on the beating, and asked to leave the school, Auckland’s King’s College. Uffindell was in Year 11, or fifth form, and aged 16 years old when he attacked the younger boy. He went on to finish his schooling at St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton.
Stuff
Spare me the weasel words. He’s only sorry the story came out and if you tell me that it was pure coincidence that he set out to make amends just nine months before he decided to stand for parliament there is a bridge I can sell you.
That’s bullshit and he knows it. He did that to try and clear out the baggage.
Uffindell entered Parliament this year after winning the Tauranga by-election in June. A National spokesperson said the party was proactively informed about the incident by Uffindell during the candidate selection process. They said it was a significant event reflecting a serious error of judgement by a then 16-year-old, for which he had since apologised, and regretted to this day.
The victim, who Stuff has agreed not to name due to privacy concerns for his young family, said Uffindell had contacted him out-of-the-blue through a mutual acquaintance in July last year.
Uffindell wanted to apologise, which after some consideration, the victim agreed to. At the time, he said he would never forgive the boy who hurt him, but forgave the man Uffindell had become.
“But then a few months later I sat down to watch the news on the couch with a beer and there he was, running for Parliament,” the victim said. “I felt sick.”
This just shows that National still hasn’t sorted out its selection processes. They knew – and they carried on. That makes Peter Goodfellow culpable, and the preselection panel culpable.
National need to sort themselves out. Sadly, I don’t think they can.
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