OPINION
Some Democracy NZ supporters have scattered. If they manage to get Winston Peters back into Parliament, perhaps there could be a real shake up.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon opens his party’s conference at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, on Saturday, 24 June 2023. […] From the onset of the conference, party members were given a goal: getting New Zealand ‘back on track’ by obtaining 45 per cent of the party vote at the coming election, on October 14, 2023’.
A strong National Government is needed to get the country’s “mojo” back, National leader Christopher Luxon has told party members as he kicks off National’s election year conference.
Luxon launched his party’s weekend-long conference in Wellington on Saturday, where party faithful have gathered at the Michael Fowler Centre to talk policy and the party’s electoral prospects.
In speeches to rally their members, both Luxon and deputy leader Nicola Willis did not attack Labour but cast the country as reaching a “critical point” and presented voters a choice: a country where the Kiwi “promise” of getting ahead through hard work was at risk, or the “hope” and aspiration of a National government.
“I’m someone who had a regular Kiwi upbringing. I worked hard and I did well, and I want that for every Kiwi kid, to have the same opportunity to flourish and to realise that,” Luxon said, in an opening speech.
Stuff 24 June 2023
National says it is determined to work hard to pull ahead of Labour. The challenge is to gain at least another 10–15 per cent in the polls, as they have hovered around a dismal 30–35 per cent for too long.
The two-part documentary We Came Here for Freedom has recently been released. It tells the other side, or the true story, of the Wellington protests; one that the government and MSM attempted to suppress. Thousands of ‘freedom people’ will be reminded what they went through simply trying to be heard. The film highlights how all the current MPs ignored their plight and pleas and, by their united silence, supported the police hurting them. All the MPs sided with Ardern’s Government in their non response on Parliament grounds to peaceful protestors who had had enough of the pointless Covid mandates.
The freedom votes are once again up for grabs. Democracy NZ firing a candidate followed by a walkout of other candidates from the party has resulted in many looking for a new political home. They are unlikely to change their view of National.
With an ear to the ground, I suspect there is a move toward NZ First by these disenfranchised Democracy NZ supporters. Winston Peters may well scoop up these wanderers, enabling him to get his party over the five per cent threshold, while National’s numbers remain much the same.
Peters has spoken out strongly against Labour’s apartheid policies, as documented here by Casey Costello of Hobson’s Pledge, and this will appeal to these conservative Kiwis.
She writes despairingly on 6 July 2023 how Labour is determined to undermine even the foundation of equal suffrage in NZ.
Recently, the Minister of Local Government, Kieran McAnulty, disregarded democracy as irrelevant in New Zealand. He commented on the undemocratic Three Waters reforms, stating that they “wouldn’t stand up to a purely academic democratic framework, but that’s not how we work”.
Further highlighting this Government’s disdain for democracy, the Independent Electoral Review Committee released a 338-page report with 100 recommendations last month.
It is hard not to throw your hands up in despair as we face yet another attack on our proud democratic heritage, but I am asking you to take a moment and stand up against this madness.
At the heart of the report, and the issue we cannot allow to continue, is that electoral processes will have the Treaty and its undefined principles entrenched into legislation.
As well as various differentiated considerations for Maori and non-Maori voters, the reform will, yet again, undermine the foundation of equal suffrage in New Zealand.
We have summarised this issue on our website with some instructions on how to respond.
Out of left field, or should I say in this case – right field, New Zealand has a situation where, virtually overnight, one party (Democracy NZ) loses supporters and another (NZ First) may gain them.
Will there be a massive shake up if New Zealand’s previous Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, gets back into Parliament? This stance Peters has recently taken, see below, will also be music to the ears of these potential new voters.