The BFD | Democracy Saves Us All

OPINION

Richard Treadgold

Founder
Free New Zealand

One thousand, four hundred and sixty-six kilometres from the warm and turbulent North Cape to the cold and turbulent Stewart Island mark the length of our glorious land – the world’s third-oldest continuous democracy and the most remote.

Driving reveals agreeable bays and beaches, trees, birds, rich green pasture, swathes of tussock, epic mountains and bush (as we call it – impenetrable forest to most). This ‘bush’ gentles the crude contours of our unstable geology until some barren granite slab towers majestically above the trees.

New Zealand is a welcoming land. Under the amiable sorcery we call hospitality, Kiwis will invite you in, say make yourself at home, and so you are at home and you will call it home forever even if you never return. May this simple courtesy last forever.

But now our land is silent. We catch on the breeze sometimes a murmuring, like distant insects, that’s all. A rainstorm makes more noise than this, but there’s talk of a coming cyclone, a firestorm, a cataclysm of greedy snatch and grab, perhaps a savagery not seen in two hundred years and a naked lust for gold and dominion.

They won’t conquer the country, surely? Yet we see, in our astonished, disbelieving silence, the enemy mauls democracy, and alters national and local legislation to actually outlaw democracy in an obscene breach of it. From Maori electorates and local Maori wards, in professions from law to medicine to engineering and midwifery, we can no longer elect our representatives and policy turns woke. So we learn powerlessness.

In the last election our vote clung by a thread – by the next it might have gone. Activist voices rise everywhere, echo down Queen Street, along Lambton Quay, around the Square and through The Octagon. Misreading the leaked report on the Treaty Principles Bill, activists raged. “Let this fuel our fire! We do not surrender! We do not cede,” thundered Rawiri Waititi, who moans about the “tyranny of democracy”.

We need to make more noise to make it plain we despise this racist rebellion, refuse distortions of our history and forbid the destruction of our constitution. The Coalition are composed and valiant, but it’s hard to hold the line against relentless hostility and should take courage when they hear our voice.

With 567,000 part-Maori and 3,121,000 part-British and other registered voters (table below), we hugely outnumber them, but activists can win if they wreck our democracy.

Maori leaders at Ratana called the Government their enemy and thus revealed their own enmity.

Democracy seems like tyranny only because the tribes are not democratic – leaders decide everything. It’s a hopeful sign that Maoris love to say what they think.

One simple message can unite both sides: “Democracy saves us all.” As more wise heads grasp this, the more happiness and prosperity will the nation have.

We need to send a clear message to MPs, so let’s have a storm of emails and letters. “Dear MP, fight to save democracy or you’ll never get my vote. Signed politely.” As brief as that (add your own thoughts and include your networks).

Send to Members of Parliament and Ministers of the Crown (emails here), the media (emails here), public figures, friends and family.

We just need to speak, and we can win.