Seymour demands migrants agree to ‘NZ values’ – so what values? Anglo-Saxon Values? Let’s go there!

David Seymour resurrects idea of migrants signing NZ ‘values statement’

Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour has suggested requiring migrants coming to New Zealand to sign a “values statement” should be Government policy.

He’s also spoken of how some people criticise immigration and promise to “get rid of it”, but then do nothing when they are in power.

Introducing a values statement is not a new idea. The Act leader mentioned it in 2016 after an increase to New Zealand’s refugee quota, while NZ First leader Winston Peters at the time accused “toy MP” Seymour of stealing his party’s policy.

Seymour’s new comments come shortly after Peters told the Herald last week that people arriving here shouldn’t be able to “get out of the water or out of the sky” without the precondition that “they accept what we’re setting here”.

Peters said there was concern in some European countries about “people who have come there who don’t salute the flag, don’t salute the values of the country, don’t salute the people who were there before them, don’t respect the right to have your own religion”.

“These sorts of things are values that we need to stress. If you don’t subscribe to that, don’t come here,” he said.

Asked about immigration concerns on Newstalk ZB this week, Seymour noted that in 2016 he had made the point that “we should actually have a New Zealand values statement”.

“That’s not the Government’s policy. But I suspect it should be,” the Act leader said.

He said that “if you want to be part of New Zealand”, people should “sign up to” ideas such as “men and women are equal”, “someone’s sexuality or religion is a private matter”, “we have certain rights before the law” and “we have free speech”.

In his powerful 2013 polemic, ‘How we invented freedom & why it matters’, Conservative Politician and writer, Daniel Hannan makes a powerful case for the values of the Anglosphere by tracing the history of Anglo-Saxon democratic friction points from Crown vs Parliament,  Protestant vs Catholic and Whig vs Tory.

Hannan argues that these friction points towards a common law where the individual was empowered against the Crown set in motion a raft of unique Anglo-Saxon political values that created an exceptionalism for Western Democracy.

Free Speech, free contract, free assembly, parliamentary control of the executive, an independent Judiciary, these Hannon argues sets in motion a collection of values that builds a democratic infrastructure that has been honed by Whig and Tory factions over centuries and diluted a system of Western Civilisation that empowers the individual and protects them from tyrants.

In NZ we focus almost exclusively on Māori culture and our biculturalism rather than any exploration of our Anglo-Saxon whakapapa because in post-modern New Zealand, decolonisation and the legacy of colonialism eclipses all else.

Which I think while understandable, misses understanding a big part of who we are by ignoring our Anglo-Saxon whakapapa.

New Zealand has mixed Māori communalism with Anglo-Saxon egalitarianism generated by those leaving the British class system for more actual social mobility based on meritocracy.

We are the country where Universal Suffrage was first won, the 40 hour working week invented alongside nuclear free independence.

There is an honour in our Anglosphere tradition that demands answering, so if we are to take those values of Free Speech, free contract, free assembly, parliamentary control of the executive, an independent Judiciary, and compare them to ACT’s actions, do we see a Party who is standing for those values that ACT are demanding of immigrants or do we see gross hypocrisy?

Hint, it’s gross hypocrisy.

Let’s start with Free Speech, ACT make an enormous amount of noise being a free speech champion, but they recently used taxpayer money to launch an enemies list of people who critiqued their Regulatory Standards Bill. They denigrated and attacked academics who had the temerity to point out how undemocratic ACTs policy would be!

That’s not defending free speech, that’s fucking hypocritical! So it’s only free speech when we are agreeing with ACT? Try them on anything to do with Israel!

By their own actions, ACT fall immediately short of Hannan’s list!

Free contract is Hannon’s next Anglosphere value and here ACT have taken a narrow libertarian definition of this that places property rights above human rights, that was never the value of New Zealand in it’s colonial infancy, nor its modern placing.

Even in the UK, common law was supposed to protect the individual, not become a cudgel that undermined the commons. They have taken this point and fetishised it beyond any other value.

Free assembly is a joke when you consider the negative anti-union laws the Minister for Handmaidens, Borrke Van Velden has passed!

Parliamentary control of the executive which is the most important value, and here once again ACT fails! Their Regulatory Standards Bill will create a corporate judging panel who will review every law using their narrow libertarian values that have property rights over human rights.

David is actually challenging Parliamentary control of the executive by empowering these corporations to have more say than us the voters!

Why allow Corporations to vet our law inside our Parliament?

ACT’s biggest failure of Hannan’s Anglosphere democratic values is an independent Judiciary. ACT have pushed their 3 Strikes and mandatory sentencing onto the Judiciary taking away their independence!

How can ACT lecture immigrants on values when they fail so many of them?

Dame Anne Salmon makes this point devastatingly in her must read Newsroom article…

Anne Salmond: The ‘war’ on NZ values

For some time now, various environmental non-governmental organisations have been talking about a ‘war on nature’ in New Zealand.

Many initiatives highlight the gravity of what’s at stake – the ‘Fast Track’ Act, the Regulatory Standards bill; proposed amendments to the Overseas Investment Act, the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry, and National Directions under the Resource Management Act affecting forests, fresh water and soils; the radical rewriting of the Resource Management Act, the removal of regulatory powers from local councils and talk about the abolition of regional councils; and the defunding of environmental groups and initiatives.

The way these measures work is often deliberately opaque. Most New Zealanders do not realise that under the Regulatory Standards Bill, for instance, the oft-touted appeal to freedom for ‘persons’ under this bill is as much (or even more) about freedom for corporations as it is for individuals, since under the law, corporations are treated as legal ‘persons.’

Under the tangled weave of amendments to the Overseas Investment Act, international corporations are given relatively unfettered access to exploit natural resources in New Zealand, whether in mining, forestry or building infrastructure, even in our most prized and/or vulnerable landscapes and seascapes.

These amendments work together with the ‘Fast-track Approvals’ Act, the Regulatory Standards Bill, proposed amendments to national directions under the Resource Management Act, the radical rewriting of the Resource Management Act and many other measures to reduce restraints on harmful extractive activities. 

At the same time, many international corporations use the infrastructure paid for by taxpayers and ratepayers, pay little or no tax, expatriate their profits, exit when their activities cease to be profitable and too often leave behind costly and lasting damage (e.g. oil exploration, mining and industrial forestry) for ratepayers and taxpayers to pay for.

How is that supposed to generate long-term prosperity for New Zealand, and New Zealanders?

These and other new legislative and regulatory measures give local corporations similar, relatively unfettered rights, even if they inflict lasting damage on local communities and the environments they live in.

How does that square with the PM’s launch last month of a new ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ tourism campaign?

An insistence on economic calculation is a two-edged sword. If Fonterra, for instance, insists on charging international prices for butter and other produce to other New Zealanders, then by the same logic, other New Zealanders should have the right to charge Fonterra for the damage they cause to rivers, lakes and aquifers; the harm to citizens’ health, safety and enjoyment; and their contributions to New Zealand’s carbon and biodiversity global debts.

That’s not happening, though. So wealth flows out of the country, or into the pockets of relatively limited number of local shareholders, directors and chief executives, while waterways, landscapes and the climate are wrecked, and other citizens experience a reduced quality of life and an increased cost of living.

In order to achieve these one-way flows of wealth, there’s been a barrage of measures that diminish accountability to the electorate. Not surprisingly, some are now also talking about a ‘war on democracy’ in New Zealand.

This is epitomised by the way the proportional principle that underpins MMP has been undermined during coalition negotiations, with large numbers of measures with little or no electoral support signed off without public scrutiny, followed by a blitzkrieg of legislation aimed at exhausting parliamentary and public opposition.

This ‘war on democracy’ includes the overuse of urgency in Parliament to enact measures with as little debate as possible; the undue influence of lobby groups and party funders; the debasement of select committee processes; the silencing of public servants and attempts to harness them to ideological agendas instead of the public interest; the use of Parliamentary Service-employed political staff to attack individual critics; attacks on universities and the rule of law; the undermining of local government while centralising executive power; and to cap it all, unheralded and unwanted changes to electoral processes that are likely to disenfranchise large numbers of voters.

Many MPs seem to have forgotten who pays their salaries, and the job they’ve been hired to do in Parliament – i.e, to serve the interests of all New Zealanders, faithfully and well.

That applies to all MPs, whether in government or opposition. At times, the fight against a barrage of harmful legislation is left to voluntary organisations and individual citizens with limited resources, when that is the primary responsibility of opposition MPs. Democracy in New Zealand is staggering under these assaults.

This begs the question, does this add up to a ‘war on New Zealand’ and New Zealanders? Whose interests are being served by the current legislative agenda?

Unheralded amendments to the Pay Equity Act, passed under urgency and aimed at constraining the incomes of low paid (mostly) female workers; a host of measures that reduce incomes, increase precarity and worsen working conditions for many; the loss of access to affordable housing, reliable and affordable childcare and healthcare, and the ability to put food on the table; increases in unemployment, homelessness and child poverty; the failure to give citizens the assurance that if they are disabled, ill, out of work or hit by disaster through no fault of their own, they will be supported, and that they can afford a reasonable retirement – all raise questions about how New Zealand is being governed at present.

No wonder so many New Zealanders are leaving the country to look for a brighter future. There can be no worse indictment against any government.

…exactly!

This anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-worker, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-disabled, anti-environment hard right Government is running romper stomper over so many kiwis as they strangle the common good for their donor mates interests.

It is no wonder so many are fleeing.

ACT can demand migrants sign up to our values, but ACT fails all those standards!

Corporations and wealthy interests are driving every single policy decision alongside a religious zealot free market faith to cut the State back so the market will step in and do it cheaper.

These are not the values of Māori, New Zealand or our Anglo-Saxon forebears.

These are the values of the wealth elites and the mega rich. They are championing the interests of power that centuries worth of democratic cultural friction inside the Anglo-Saxon tradition fought against.

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