OPINION
April 25th marks the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during World War I, at Gallipoli. New Zealand and Australia mark the anniversary each year, remembering not only those who died at Gallipoli, but all who have served their country in times of war.
The crucial consequence of the terrible events of World War I was the rescue of democracy, primarily in Europe, but also around the world.
President Woodrow Wilson framed American involvement as a means to support the free people of Europe, principally the British and French.
The United States’ declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 and its subsequent dispatch of millions of troops to Europe were pivotal in securing an Allied victory. The democracies of Western Europe (Belgium, Britain and France) could not have prevailed without the contribution of American soldiers and armaments.
The repressive vision the autocratic rulers of Europe held for a post-war European order, thankfully, was never realised. Germany’s war aims were to dominate the continent while making the Kaiser a European emperor. Germany would have not only neutered Britain and France but also annexed Belgium and Luxembourg and seized swaths of territory from the Russian Empire in the east. A German victory would have sounded the death knell for European democracy.
Those who died in the horrific battlefields of France and Belgium and those who perished in the ill-planned Gallipoli landings did so for the maintenance of democracy!
Likewise, the Second World War was fought to keep the flag of democracy flying around the world.
The instability created in Europe by WWI set the stage two decades later for the Second World War. Rising to power in an economically and politically chaotic Germany, Adolf Hitler rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his, and his Axis allies’, ambitions of world domination.
The Allied victory in the Second World War was terribly hard-earned but delivered the rejection of authoritarianism and dictatorship in favour of democracy.
A total of roughly 105,000 men and women from New Zealand served overseas during the Second World War. Of those, around 11,000 died on the battlefields of Europe, Asia and the Pacific.
On Anzac Day, we commemorate those who fought and died for freedom and democracy. We all come together to remember our fallen soldiers, both men and women, who during war made the ultimate sacrifice.
Our country banded together as one – Maori, European, Pasifika – to join our allies to suppress the Axis tyrants so you and I could live in a free democracy. A democracy where we live as one. One country, one flag and one people living together as equals, each casting one vote.
Visit any New Zealand war cemetery in Europe or Asia, and observe the hundreds of graves, each marked with a white cross identifying a fallen New Zealand soldier. Not a Maori or Pasifika or European soldier, a NEW ZEALAND soldier!
Look at the ages of the fallen. All so young, so much life to live, so much to offer the world, but, sadly, never to return home.
They did not lay down their lives in vain. They died, heroically defending the most precious of New Zealand’s possessions, our democracy!
We, who were fortunate to come after these terrible conflicts, can never fully appreciate the horror, the nightmare and the privations endured on the battlefields of the world: endured, so we can all enjoy living in a free democracy.
New Zealand is at a historic crossroads. Through apathy we can allow ourselves to be herded left down the no exit, “Democracy Demise” road by this duplicitous Labour Government and their powerful Maori caucus as they push towards full Maori sovereignty and the cessation of democracy.
Or we can continue forward with positivity, retaining a form of government that empowers citizens to exercise their political rights and control; a government that allows and welcomes free speech, that preserves an independent judiciary, that values an impartial media and, most importantly, allows every vote to carry the same weight in elections: one person, one vote!
We are currently witnessing a massive overreach of power by this Labour Government. We are encumbered with an authoritarian Government intent on dividing the country along ethnic lines, into a form of governance in which Maori would hold a disproportionate amount of control, power and influence.
Can they not see the similarities between what they are striving to create and what wars were fought to end?
To allow Labour’s toxic He Puapua blueprint to supplant democracy with tribal rule would adjudge the lives of those thousands of New Zealanders to have been sacrificed in vain.
It is time for all New Zealanders to ask themselves –
- Are we now afraid to stand up for what is right?
- Do we now not value the rights of each person equally?
- Are democracy and free speech now not worth fighting for?
- Do you want to live in a country where you are defined and divided by race?
When you attend a dawn service on Anzac Day or watch on TV, as the Last Post is played, that tune that gives us the lump in our throats and moistens our eyes, summoning the spirits of the fallen and all serving military members to salute their past service, ask yourself why they fought, who they fought for and, most importantly, what they fought for.
They most certainly DID NOT fight for Tribal Rule!
All those soldiers, sailors and airmen: each someone’s husband or wife, son or daughter, still lying in a foreign country, never to return home.
This fraudulent Labour Government and its support parties, who are hell-bent on consigning all aspects of democracy to the history books are, in essence, trampling on the graves and destroying the memory of those brave men and women who fought and laid down their lives to preserve democracy.
SHAME ON YOU! YOU SHOULD FOREVER HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME!