Why Luxon and Seymour’s refusal to denounce Winston’s disgraceful false accusations is so dangerous

Christopher Luxon and David Seymour not commenting on Winston Peters’ Christchurch terror attack tweets

Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon kept a low profile on Thursday as his likely governing partner Winston Peters continued to post inaccurate information about the response to the March 15 terror attack in Christchurch on social media.

Luxon had no media engagements planned on Thursday, but his staff would not put him up to comment on Peters’ remarks.

They referred all requests for comment to remarks made by National MP Simeon Brown on TVNZ’s Breakfast on Wednesday morning, where Brown said Peters’ remarks were “ultimately up to him”.

The National Party’s silence comes as negotiations to form the next Government, one that will possibly include Peters, dragged on.

One of the issues with the election is how middle class work activists generated culture war ammunition for the Right that we on the Left could never win.

When we failed to de-escalate the Dumb Lives Matter Parliament Lawn Protest, I said at the time that the vast majority of protestors were Labour/Green voters and that we had lost them forever.

They left bitter and hateful towards the Left and their dark treacle oozed into the dark spaces with dark demented energy.

We have not calculated the full political price yet of this culture war. We see it in the lifted National and ACT vote obviously, and we see it in NZ First over the threshold, but also look at that dark energy below the threshold…

…a bitter mix of Christian extremism, Qanon nonsense, antivax madness and reactionary anger.

That’s 2.63 of the vote lost to spite.

NZ First is a vehicle for anti-Māori identity activism, the gambling industry, the fishing industry and antivaxx acolytes.

Winston has to flirt with that Conspiracy Theory electorate to remain politically relevant and his despicable tweet insinuating Jacinda knew about the white supremacist before the shooting is evidence of that new conspiracy theory extremism.

Look who Winston is flirting with…

…on the radically toxic Voices for Freedom Radio which has become an important media vehicle for hate politics hosted by the most radioactive Hate Blogger in the game.

Within that toxic world of primordial swamp there are feverish conspiracies where the NZ Government allowed the terror attack to occur so that the State could remove guns as part of a Global conspiracy to take over society.

Winston’s insinuation that Jacinda knew something 8 minutes before it happened feeds this dark conspiracy hatescape that Winston now draws political energy from.

The insinuation is beneath the mana of Jacinda to even respond to and the fact that Seymour and Luxon  have said nothing highlights how much power Winston now has over them.

Look at what NZFirst operatives said to Matthew Hooton to defend this sleaze…

NZ First insiders are unapologetic. They told me yesterday it’s all about upsetting people like me to draw attention to Peters, and to signal to Luxon that “he better refresh his gantt chart”.

That would suggest to me a despicable new level of cynicism that we have never seen before in New Zealand, even when Peters was launching his most vicious attacks on new immigrants in the 1990s.

…that they would openly decide and lie just for attention is a horrific indictment.

This is a man who claimed falsely that Harry Tam took a covid positive prostitute through Northland checkpoints and Matthew Hooton reminds us again of the long history of smears spoken by Winston…

Ardern can take comfort that she isn’t the first person Peters has so falsely and contemptibly smeared.

As early as 1996, the courts found in a defamation action that “Mr Peters was at best reckless or even worse he knew the words used were false. Either way he acted maliciously.”

That case concerned one of the false allegations Peters had made over several years for which — to use his own cynical slogan — he provided “not a shred of evidence”.

He has never changed.

After happily selling the Government’s shares in Auckland International Airport as Treasurer in July 1998, he led a performative Cabinet walk-out only weeks later over a similar sale of shares in Wellington Airport.

That forced his sacking and the collapse of the National-NZ First Coalition, in my view allowing him to play martyr.

In 2008, the Spencer Trust scandal disrupted the Clark Government’s final year, with the Privileges Committee finding Peters had knowingly provided false or misleading information to Parliament and the public about an undisclosed $100,000 donation.

Matters concerning donations to the NZ First Foundation, which marred Ardern’s first term, remain before the courts.

…look, there are many reasons to be critical of how the Christchurch terrorist gained his guns and managed to pull off the Christchurch atrocity.

This is the list of NZ security apparatus, many acronyms you’ve never heard of, who are supposed to keep us safe with mass surveillance powers from this very type of terrorism…

• The SIS (Secret Intelligence Services)
• The GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau)
• The NSG (National Security Group)
• The Police Intelligence Unit
• The CNSN (Cabinet National Security Committee)
• The ODESC (Officials’ Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination)
• The SIB (Security and Intelligence Board)
• The CTCC (Counter-Terrorism Coordinating Committee)
• The NICC ( National Intelligence Coordination Committee)
• The IAD (Intelligence and Assessments Directorate)
• The NRU (National Risk Unit)
• The NSPD (National Security Policy Directorate)

…they collectively cost us in excess of $100million per year, and when it comes to spying on Muslims, Nicky Hager, Me, Greenpeace, Māori protesting oil drilling, environmentalists and the MANA Party, oh the State breaches our rights all the time without blinking, but a white supremacist terrorist who used white supremacy keywords online, with complaints from the Muslim Community itself and complaints from other gun owners,oh no, apparently our entire Intelligence Apparatus failed and didn’t have any idea whatsoever.

You can see why they’ve slapped a 30year secrecy clause on everything.

These Departments are supposed to be the ones who are asking ‘what if’, they are supposed to be the ones with the imagination to see where the next threat is coming from and they have enormous mass surveillance powers and resourcing to do this.

And yet, nothing.

There are more questions that demand answering:

• Why did the Waikato firearms officer issue a licence to an applicant who lived in Dunedin?
• Why was a licence issued so quickly to a new arrival in the country? When a friend of mine, who was a serving army officer at the time, was told by form letter that the renewal of his licence would take six months.
• Why were the applicant’s references not interviewed?
• Why were the applicant’s parents not interviewed?
• Why were Australian Police not contacted?
• Why were his unusual travel movements around the Middle East, including Pakistan not flagged as a risk factor?
• Why was he issued a permit to bulk purchase ammunition within weeks of his arrival?

So there are many questions about intelligence failure, but to insinuate as Winston has that the Prime Minister ‘knew something’ because she and 30 other agencies were sent the manifesto 8 minutes before the atrocity is such an egregious smear that highlights where NZ First is now politically.

The total silence from Luxon and Seymour to a smear they know is totally untrue infects them all.

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If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media