Winston Peters – “Let’s do the time warp again” State of the Irritation Speech today

1
1

winston445

It’s just a jump to the right.

Like the yellow and orange of a 1970s living room, Winston Peters has burnt himself into the national dialogue with a vision of a NZ yesteryear where boomers had universal state sponsored services and the social enlightenment of a beer advert.

This time it’s the bloody immigrants again. Ahhhh yes, the immigrants. While I genuinely wonder if we as the host culture actually do enough to welcome our new immigrant brothers and sisters by explaining our history and what our rights of being a NZer are, Winston seems to blame all the immigrants for taking up our offer to resettle here is the problem.

This isn’t dog whistle politics, this is a dog megaphone politics. It’s the desperate populism of a Politician who should know better playing to the darker angels of our nature in a base and slimy manner that is as belittling to those it feeds as it is offensive to those new residents and citizens calling Aotearoa home.

Ugly, we are better than the tone of that debate.

1 COMMENT

  1. Despite of some “dog whistle”, which was in the speech by Peters, there are other parts that make sense (re economics, the asset sales, the direction of the country under neoliberalism and the likes, having left too many missing out). It is of course more economic “nationalism” and conservative style social policy, plus a mixture of what we know Peters and NZ First for, what was in the speech.

    I watched the news on TV and heard what radio stations presented about it, and it was of course brief quotes of the usual references to immigration policy and the apparently untrue, bizarre claim about the sale of the Huka Lodge.

    Yet much of the speech was about other topics and more complex. While I think that Peters is again walking on danger territory and will certainly not get my vote, it may perhaps pay to look at the full speech, to understand what he was on about. The MSM certainly only picked what they wanted to report on, none else:

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1402/S00309/winston-peters-the-real-state-of-the-nation.htm

    …for fairness sake..

Comments are closed.