Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 03/10/2001
Music - Die Fledermaus
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show for Wednesday, October 3, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit & excellence against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down!]
The New Zealand National Party, for the benefit of overseas readers, is this country's main opposition party, the equivalent of Britain's Conservative Party (or Tories, as they're historically known). Since the election of our first Labour Government in 1935, National has governed for 38 years as opposed to Labour's 28. As Tories are wont to do, its members came to see themselves as the "natural" governing party, born to rule & existing to rule. Though their constitution commits them to free enterprise & individual liberty, these principles have been honoured more in the breach than in the observance when National has been in power, as power has taken precedence over principle.
For the last couple of weeks the party has been plagued by rumours of a leadership coup against its leader, Jenny Shipley, by her deputy, Bill English. The rumours - & that's really all they were: tiny sparks fanned into flames by media flatulence - came to nothing, at least for the time being, & would have amounted to little even had they come to pass. It's true that Mrs Shipley has been an ineffectual leader; it's also true that she & Bill English have no significant philosophical differences & a change at the top would have been cosmetic rather than substantive.
A case in point of National's pragmatism & resultant lack of passion & direction is its current affectation of indignation at the Labour/Alliance Government's response to the terrorist attacks on New York. The response was too slow & too muted, says National. Yet National itself has been FAR too slow & FAR too muted in protesting against the downgrading of our navy & air forces by this government - & outright cowardly in shrinking from proposing the single move that could most effectively restore our defence credibility AND communicate to the United States that, for all her unlibertarian faults, in an imperfect world we are prepared to be there for her in her hour of need. That single move is: the revival of Anzus, the trilateral defence contract between the United States, Australia & New Zealand. The reason National has been cowardly about this is that for Anzus to be revived, New Zealand would have to drop its idiotic ban on visits by nuclear-powered & nuclear-armed warships. National is too scared to contemplate THAT, because of the votes it might lose in a nation where so many voters ARE idiots.
The best National can manage is a press statement by its defence spokesman Max Bradford today, urging a "precautionary principle about down grading [sic] our defence capabilities in times of such uncertainty."
Now THAT'S going to have Labour & the Alliance quaking in their socialist jackboots! Not.
Find your balls, National - maybe then, in these "uncertain times" when polls are showing a sudden upsurge in pro-American sentiment, you'll jolt enough people out of their idiocy to regain the power you so smugly imagine is your birthright.
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