As usual, last weekend’s New Zealand First conference in Palmerston North was very much about the Dear Leader. Alas, and like many other gentlemen of advancing years, Winston Peters has turned into one of the people that his younger self used to rail against. His allies in government these days are the same free-market zealots that New Zealand First was founded to oppose. His enemies of yesteryear were a previous crop of David Seymours and Brooke van Veldens i.e. privileged elitists with no concern about how their political ideologies were going to impact on the people left behind. Peters used to fight those kind of fanatics. Now, he signs off on their policies at the Cabinet table.
Once upon a time, Peters founded NZ First to speak for the people being left behind by the two major parties. He now flits between Labour and National seeking advantage where he can. His left-behinds are no longer the victims of an economic and social policy that – with a few occasional exceptions – he now enables.
The battles over economic policy may be over but like populists everywhere, Peters sorely needs a scapegoat. That’s the main reason why he is now fighting a culture war against the phantom legions of the woke, on behalf of a new crop of left-behinds: the anti-vaxxers, the conspiracy theorists, the climate deniers and the anti-immigrant brigade. These are the people who resent having their obsessions challenged by anyone, let alone by disdainful elitists who come to the table armed with their facts and their figures and their so-called science.
For all of his own intellectual smarts, Peters is heading into the political twilight in the company of the kind of people that Lenin once called useful idiots. Winston Peters once seemed capable of much more than this.
Footnote One: One recruit waiting in the wings is Labour reject Stuart Nash, who finally got himself fired by Chris Hipkins for repeatedly using his ministerial powers to infringe on the operational independence of the Police. As a “tough on crime” guy with no time for namby-pamby policing, Nash should fit in pretty well alongside the other cranks and opportunists in the NZF caravan.
Footnote Two: In a dog whistle to the kind of anti-immigrant sentiments that his good friend Nigel Farage routinely whips up, Peters reportedly wants it be made mandatory for migrants to sign a pledge committing them to observe what he sees as being core New Zealand values.
Really? I thought being a nation willing to unquestioningly offer comfort and shelter to those coming in need from afar was always one of New Zealand’s core values.
China, on parade
Last week, the criticism levelled at Helen Clark and John Key for attending the Victory Parade in Beijing was unjustified. All but lost among the media coverage was the fact that the “victory” being commemorated was the 80th anniversary of the Japanese surrender marking (finally!) the end of WWII. China has earned the right to observe this milestone, and to celebrate how far it has come since those dark days. Japanese ethno-fascism took a terrible toll on the Chinese people:
From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war.
Besides China, who else celebrated the same 80th anniversary milestone last week? King Charles, in this impassioned message. Our own Veterans Affairs Ministry also noted the significance of the event:
The 80th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War is probably the last significant anniversary that will commemorate the service of New Zealanders in the Second World War while there are living veterans.
In sum, this event shouldn’t have been treated by Judith Collins as an opportunity to score some petty points against Helen Clark. It could/should have been a time for joining with China, and celebrating our previous joint struggles against a common aggressor. After all, tens of thousands of New Zealanders and Australians had fought (and many had died) during the War in the Pacific, which brought WWII to our very doorstep. It took the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Coral Sea to dispel the fears of a Japanese invasion of this country.
Yes, China was using the occasion to make a fresh point about its emergence from the ruins of war, to where it is now a global superpower. Why do we insist on living in denial about that fact? For the past 50 years, New Zealanders have been told that our destiny no longer lies with the old European powers. We are said to be part of Asia now, and that we need to embrace solidarity with the region in which we live, and trade. Arguably, having someone attend the Victory Parade would have been entirely consistent with that message.
After all, China has been a vital trading partner for nearly 20 years. Yet bizarrely, when it comes to a celebration led by China, and attended by its friends, neighbours and political allies… our government reverts to acting as if we’re still a defiant outpost of the old colonial empire. Only New Zealand First still yearns to keep that flag flying.
The Luxon government not only shied away from having any official presence at this event. Judith Collins chose to attack Helen Clark in particular, even though Clark and Key had shown up purely in their capacity as private citizens. They’d earned that status. Both had played a vital part in formalising/normalising the trade relationships with China on which our prosperity has come to depend.
Evidently though, a cringing fear of offending Donald Trump now over-rides every other sensible diplomatic and economic reality. Yes, some unsavoury individuals – Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un – were present at the Victory Parade. Inevitably so. (Korea also suffered grievously at the hands of the Japanese.) Surely in a context commemorating the end of Asia’s years of brutalisation at the hands of Japan, a display of military pomp can be tolerated as an expression of “This must never happen again” bravado.
If anything, we should be grateful to Clark and Key for ensuring there was some New Zealand presence. Are we so insecure, and so intolerant of China’s emergence as a global superpower that we feel impelled to hide behind the diplomatic sofa every time that China puts on a show of strength? When New Zealand was being led by John Key, National was nowhere near as spineless. Judith Collins would do well to re-read this speech by Gerry Brownlee. Brownlee gave the speech 10 years ago, back when he was visiting China as our Defence Minister.
Brownlee outlined the common interests that our countries share. He explicitly acknowledged that instead of posing a threat to maritime trade, China depends – just as we do – on the sea lanes of global commerce being kept open:
Like China, we rely heavily on free access to major shipping routes and sea lanes of communication for our own economic prosperity.
Brownlee welcomed the way that in the Cook Islands, the militaries of China and New Zealand were working happily together:
Our combined efforts, engineers and other supporting staff from all nations constructed a number of fuel tanks in the Cook Islands. This will help to enable the Cook Islands to maintain their own exclusive economic zone and secure their own sustainable future. It also has the additional effect of getting our militaries used to working together.
As in the Cooks, so in the Middle East. New Zealand and China, as Brownlee noted, had both been contributing to the fight against piracy off the Horn of Africa:
We see our relationship with China as a crucial avenue for helping to maintain New Zealand’s interests in a stable and prosperous Asia-Pacific, and for addressing some of the region’s security challenges…. Indeed, China is an important strategic partner for New Zealand.
Hello? Why don’t we hear Christopher Luxon or Judith Collins talking more about China as an “important strategic partner ” in the Pacific? Brownlee thought that our defence relationship with Beijing was in pretty good shape:
Our Five Year Engagement Plan with the People’s Liberation Army is the first agreed between China and a Western military, demonstrating the unique nature of our relationship…. China is now one of the world’s biggest contributors of peacekeepers to United Nations missions…. The People’s Liberation Army has also demonstrated its capacity as a responsible world actor through disaster relief efforts in Nepal, the Maldives and the Philippines, and in the search for MH370.
Moreover:
Creating opportunities for our junior soldiers to work together in real, practical situations is another priority for New Zealand. This will boost interoperability, mutual understanding and enable us to share perspectives on the world. The soldiers of today will be the generals of tomorrow – just as those in this fine institution [the university where Brownlee was speaking] will be the People’s Liberation Army’s thought leaders of the future.
Brownlee concluded with the startling observation that the Key government did not regard the US and China as being mutually exclusive defence partners for us:
We do not see our defence relationships with the United States and China as mutually exclusive. We believe that the United States and China want the same thing for the Asia-Pacific – peace and prosperity. This is New Zealand’s desire as well, and we will work with all parties to achieve this outcome.
Such a friendly speech would be unthinkable today. It demonstrates just how far this country has travelled back under the wing of U.S defence and security policy in the Pacific. If New Zealand still felt the same way as it did when Brownlee gave that speech, there would have been absolutely nothing to stop our diplomats, let alone our private citizens, from attending China’s commemoration of the world’s Victory Over Japan.
In the new, frightened world created by Donald Trump, New Zealand plainly feels it has much less room to pursue an independent foreign policy. Even so… in her pathetic attempt to curry favour with the vain and erratic man in the White House, Judith Collins shouldn’t be trying to make it seem as though Helen Clark is the problem here.
Footnote: By not attending the Beijing event, New Zealand also paid an opportunity cost. India’s leader Narendra Modi went to the Victory Parade, fresh from being battered by Trump with absurdly high tariffs on India’s exports that – together with other Trump-inflicted diplomatic humiliations – have pushed India into seeking better relations with China.
New Zealand dearly wants to speed up its trade deal with India. The Victory Parade would have provided some great sideline opportunities for Christopher Luxon to lend Modi a sympathetic ear, and to push our case for better trade ties with New Delhi. Unfortunately, the gestures of appeasement we’re offering to the Trump administration are making those options take a back seat.