Opportunists - evident in their flip flopping on selling NZ to the highest bidder. It was always just about whether they got the right price. And global money is big money.
Yup. NZ First gains funding from all sorts of fishy sources (pun intended)
I get that quite a few working class New Zealanders currently support NZ First in the absence of other political options, I just wish there was more awareness of how cynical NZ First are. In voting to abolish fair pay agreements, Peters has effectively voted for the Employment Contracts Act twice. That I find hard to forgive, especially when even Jim Bolger now thinks the ECA went too far.
Going beyond Winston Peters and New Zealand First there is scope to revisit the legacy of Robert Muldoon's National Party. The question should not be whether Peters is an opportunist. After all, which parliamentary politician is not?. Opportunism goes with the territory of politics.
Peters first came into the New Zealand Parliament as a member of Muldoon's governing party, and so naturally in his maiden address to the House he would make statesmanlike comments deploring political negativity. In opposition, things are seen from a different perspective, and the more negative the better.
The proper question to ask is whether Peters, New Zealand First, Robert Muldoon and the National Party are indeed nationalist. That is tantamount to asking whether nationalism is a feature of New Zealand capitalism, as it has been a feature of capitalism in most other nations at various stages in their development.
There is no simple answer to that question. Despite what the left might think, the National Party does represent the interests of certain elements of domestic capital and therefore has a slim right to call itself a "National" party.
Muldoon was the leader of the National Party, and also a nationalist of sorts. Regrettably, his nationalism was often expressed in petty ways such as contempt or disregard for races other than Maori and the British-descended peoples who were considered to constitute the national population of New Zealand. That contempt extended to working class Britons (those with "Clydeside accents"), though not to the British ruling classes, for whom he always showed a proper respect.
So far, so like Winston Peters.
Under Muldoon National set out to develop New Zealand's industrial capacity with the aims of providing the infrastructure necessary to support New Zealand's primary export industries and employing foreign capital to build the industrial base necessary to become a fully developed economy, with domestic capital providing a second tier of small to medium size businesses. Therein lay a contradiction. New Zealand at the time was (and still is) an integral part of the Anglo-American imperial system. The imperial powers wanted New Zealand to produce and export a range of primary products to the empire, and also wanted New Zealand, as part of the imperial alliance, to have the economic depth and strength to withstand market shocks such as the 1970s oil crisis or supposed strategic threats such as that presented by the Communist bloc. But they did not want New Zealand to develop to the point where it could go completely its own way and wave goodbye to Mother England or Uncle Sam. To the imperial powers colonies should be moderately successful, but never so successful that they take the road to full political and economic independence.
So the development of national capitalism in New Zealand was always a fraught business, negotiated between New Zealand, UK, Australian and US governments on a micro-scale, project by project.
Thus colonialism and nationalism met in the no-mans land occupied first by the National Party and Robert Muldoon, then by Winston Peters and New Zealand First. Are they nationalist or colonialist? In a sense they are both, unconsciously progressing the normal dynamic by which colonies develop into economically and eventually politically independent states. That was the process followed to completion in the British North American colonies which eventually became the United States of America.
However something happened in New Zealand to interrupt the normal historical process. In 1984, Robert Muldoon was thrown out of office and the Labour Party, which from its origins was a colonialist party pure and simple, with no aspirations for either economic or political independence from the Anglo-American imperial system, took charge. The effect of Labour's transformation of the New Zealand economy was to massively tip the balance away from domestic capital and towards foreign "investors". Labour's argument to its middle and working class supporters was that foreign capital was more efficient than domestic capital, would pay higher wages, and ultimately create more jobs. While there was some basis to that claim, ultimately it lead to New Zealand de-industrializing and created structural problems in the economy that have become progressively more severe in the succeeding four decades.
Peters could see the problems which would flow from Labour's mindlessly colonialist approach to the economy, subsequently taken up by National as well, and so New Zealand First became the one remaining party of New Zealand national capitalism. At the same time, Peters remained a colonialist through and through. He is staunchly loyal to the British monarchy, and to the United States as leader of the Anglo-American imperial system.
Sometimes people ask what has happened to Peters' "economic nationalism" now? Where has it gone? The answer is that it has missed the boat. Out of the Lange-Douglas transformation New Zealand domestic capitalism reverted to strictly colonial capitalism. Foreign capital took back the commanding heights of the New Zealand economy and any new enterprise which reaches a certain level of success is quickly sold off to foreign buyers. Thus colonialist capitalism degenerated into capitalism without heart or soul. In short, it became nothing more than a way of making money. Lacking a heart, it also lacks a sense of decency and morality. It becomes corrupt, and with it the colonialist political system, and New Zealand First in particular, has also become manifestly corrupt. Winston Peters himself has fallen victim to this corruption. None of his decisions as Deputy Prime Minister or Minister of Foreign Affairs reflects a moral approach to political affairs. He does whatever he is told to do by his superiors in Westminster, Canberra and Washington, or failing that, whatever he perceives may serve his own narrow political interests. His problem is not that he is a political opportunist. It is that he has personally succumbed to the colonialist regime's inexorable descent into political and economic corruption.
Opportunists - evident in their flip flopping on selling NZ to the highest bidder. It was always just about whether they got the right price. And global money is big money.
Yup. NZ First gains funding from all sorts of fishy sources (pun intended)
I get that quite a few working class New Zealanders currently support NZ First in the absence of other political options, I just wish there was more awareness of how cynical NZ First are. In voting to abolish fair pay agreements, Peters has effectively voted for the Employment Contracts Act twice. That I find hard to forgive, especially when even Jim Bolger now thinks the ECA went too far.
Going beyond Winston Peters and New Zealand First there is scope to revisit the legacy of Robert Muldoon's National Party. The question should not be whether Peters is an opportunist. After all, which parliamentary politician is not?. Opportunism goes with the territory of politics.
Peters first came into the New Zealand Parliament as a member of Muldoon's governing party, and so naturally in his maiden address to the House he would make statesmanlike comments deploring political negativity. In opposition, things are seen from a different perspective, and the more negative the better.
The proper question to ask is whether Peters, New Zealand First, Robert Muldoon and the National Party are indeed nationalist. That is tantamount to asking whether nationalism is a feature of New Zealand capitalism, as it has been a feature of capitalism in most other nations at various stages in their development.
There is no simple answer to that question. Despite what the left might think, the National Party does represent the interests of certain elements of domestic capital and therefore has a slim right to call itself a "National" party.
Muldoon was the leader of the National Party, and also a nationalist of sorts. Regrettably, his nationalism was often expressed in petty ways such as contempt or disregard for races other than Maori and the British-descended peoples who were considered to constitute the national population of New Zealand. That contempt extended to working class Britons (those with "Clydeside accents"), though not to the British ruling classes, for whom he always showed a proper respect.
So far, so like Winston Peters.
Under Muldoon National set out to develop New Zealand's industrial capacity with the aims of providing the infrastructure necessary to support New Zealand's primary export industries and employing foreign capital to build the industrial base necessary to become a fully developed economy, with domestic capital providing a second tier of small to medium size businesses. Therein lay a contradiction. New Zealand at the time was (and still is) an integral part of the Anglo-American imperial system. The imperial powers wanted New Zealand to produce and export a range of primary products to the empire, and also wanted New Zealand, as part of the imperial alliance, to have the economic depth and strength to withstand market shocks such as the 1970s oil crisis or supposed strategic threats such as that presented by the Communist bloc. But they did not want New Zealand to develop to the point where it could go completely its own way and wave goodbye to Mother England or Uncle Sam. To the imperial powers colonies should be moderately successful, but never so successful that they take the road to full political and economic independence.
So the development of national capitalism in New Zealand was always a fraught business, negotiated between New Zealand, UK, Australian and US governments on a micro-scale, project by project.
Thus colonialism and nationalism met in the no-mans land occupied first by the National Party and Robert Muldoon, then by Winston Peters and New Zealand First. Are they nationalist or colonialist? In a sense they are both, unconsciously progressing the normal dynamic by which colonies develop into economically and eventually politically independent states. That was the process followed to completion in the British North American colonies which eventually became the United States of America.
However something happened in New Zealand to interrupt the normal historical process. In 1984, Robert Muldoon was thrown out of office and the Labour Party, which from its origins was a colonialist party pure and simple, with no aspirations for either economic or political independence from the Anglo-American imperial system, took charge. The effect of Labour's transformation of the New Zealand economy was to massively tip the balance away from domestic capital and towards foreign "investors". Labour's argument to its middle and working class supporters was that foreign capital was more efficient than domestic capital, would pay higher wages, and ultimately create more jobs. While there was some basis to that claim, ultimately it lead to New Zealand de-industrializing and created structural problems in the economy that have become progressively more severe in the succeeding four decades.
Peters could see the problems which would flow from Labour's mindlessly colonialist approach to the economy, subsequently taken up by National as well, and so New Zealand First became the one remaining party of New Zealand national capitalism. At the same time, Peters remained a colonialist through and through. He is staunchly loyal to the British monarchy, and to the United States as leader of the Anglo-American imperial system.
Sometimes people ask what has happened to Peters' "economic nationalism" now? Where has it gone? The answer is that it has missed the boat. Out of the Lange-Douglas transformation New Zealand domestic capitalism reverted to strictly colonial capitalism. Foreign capital took back the commanding heights of the New Zealand economy and any new enterprise which reaches a certain level of success is quickly sold off to foreign buyers. Thus colonialist capitalism degenerated into capitalism without heart or soul. In short, it became nothing more than a way of making money. Lacking a heart, it also lacks a sense of decency and morality. It becomes corrupt, and with it the colonialist political system, and New Zealand First in particular, has also become manifestly corrupt. Winston Peters himself has fallen victim to this corruption. None of his decisions as Deputy Prime Minister or Minister of Foreign Affairs reflects a moral approach to political affairs. He does whatever he is told to do by his superiors in Westminster, Canberra and Washington, or failing that, whatever he perceives may serve his own narrow political interests. His problem is not that he is a political opportunist. It is that he has personally succumbed to the colonialist regime's inexorable descent into political and economic corruption.