By Dieuwe de Boer
[Republished with permission from Right Minds 24/5/19]

About a year ago I drafted an obituary for the ACT Party. I didn't publish it, but with all the flailing about and bizarre antics Seymour was doing trying to stay relevant while being dead in the polls, I thought it was about time to write them off. The only thing that really stopped me from finishing the piece was Stephen Berry's tenacity to stay in the fight for freedom of speech. Granted, not all of David Seymour's fumbles have been intentional. Some have been due his being all alone in a hostile environment without many resources at his disposal, but regardless of if they're your fault or not, a mistake is a mistake. Those make you look bad and stop people from taking you seriously.

Then along came a gift and an asset: Golriz Ghahraman of the Green Party, the biggest hate speech crusader—or should that be saracen—in parliament.

She might be the most vocal of the lot, but Jacinda Ardern and Andrew Little have been right behind her. The relative silence from National's most prominent members, Simon Bridges and Judith Collins on this have been another boost to Seymour's credibility on many issues: it's often 1 against 119.

That's turned David into a lone warrior for democracy, freedom of speech, and common sense.

He voted against the undemocratic Arms Amendment Bill, while the "opposition" wholeheartedly supported it.

He's vocally opposed the coming hate speech legislation, while the "opposition" wants to "debate" the issue.

Most recently, he's voted against the economic suicide that is the Zero Carbon Bill, while the "opposition" has supported its first reading.

As you can see, the National Party has been quite helpful to him. Without anyone who wants to lead the opposition on issues pertaining to the democratic process and freedom of speech, that leaves David Seymour in charge.

That brings us to the latest altercation between the spokeswoman for the enemies of free expression and the lone parliamentary defender of it.

"I just think that Golriz Ghahraman is completely wrong, I don't know if she understands what she is saying, but she is a real menace to freedom in this country."

He then goes on to compare Ghahraman to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping.

"It is actually very difficult to tell the difference. I actually looked at a couple of paragraphs, one paragraph from each, I tried to guess which was which, and Xi Jinping actually looked like a more liberal guy on this issue than Golriz Ghahraman."

Golriz made such a fuss about being bullied and even accused him of inciting violence against her. ACT didn't back down and their president dared her to report him to the police if she really believed that. She followed it up by accusing Seymour of "dog whistling to racists".

Simon Bridges has been silent as usual, with freedom of speech not being his cup of tea, and Judith Collins is openly taking the side of Golriz Ghahraman with the following tweet:

Time for some ‘time out’ on this. Please don’t refer to Golriz in this way. I do not agree with almost anything she says but she is a person and it does not assist political debate to dehumanise her like that.

To her, ending freedom of speech is a "political debate" and referring to a menace to freedom as a menace to freedom is "dehumanising". In an interview with radio legend Sean Plunket, she then decided that the best way to talk-up Golriz was to refer to the nearly forty year-old woman as "just a kid".

I knew we've been raising the bar for adulthood, but that seems a bit over the top to me. By the time I am the age Golriz is, my own kids will be on the cusp of adulthood themselves. David Seymour had a good laugh at this characterisation too. At least Collins agreed that we don't need "hate speech" laws, but she dismissed the police raids on gun owners and said she was proud of the Harmful Digital Communications Act.

David followed that up with "It's OK comrade, this is the nice way."

He also participated in an interview debate with my local Labour MP, Louisa Wall, where he exposed the subjectivity and absurdity of her calls for new "hate crime" legislation and continued to point out that existing laws around the incitement to violence and suicide are more than sufficient.

Jacinda, Golriz, Judith, and Louisa have all breathed new life into the ACT Party, which looked to be on the verge of needing to be euthanised.

The ACT Party suffered from having its brand ripped apart from internal infighting and fielding unsavoury candidates over many election cycles, they had their economic credibility eroded by being unable to reign in National's spending habits for nearly a decade, and more recently they shackled themselves to contentious social issues on which even libertarian-leaning voters are very much divided. That left the potential for the ACT Party very small: you could vote Green if you liked the social policy and you could vote National for unchanged economic outcomes. When it used to run—and have credibility—on solely economic issues, ACT managed around 7% of the vote.

Now it looks like ACT has once again developed a more unique flavour in parliament. With Golriz Ghahraman, Jacinda Ardern, and Andrew Little going all-in on the suppression of free speech, with Simon Bridges and Judith Collins being AWOL (or outright defecting) on a host of important issues, the ACT Party has the perfect enemies and is in the perfect position to rebrand and relaunch.

There is potential for a party with sound economic policy that gives an unflinching defense of the pillars of free society, and I am under the impression that David Seymour is finally coming into his element.
​

By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 15/5/19]

In 1990, during a British parliamentary debate on the unequal gap between rich and poor, the late Dame Margaret Thatcher formidably scolded liberal democrat, Simon Hughes: 

"They’d rather have the poor poorer, provided the rich were less rich!  So long as the gap is smaller, they would rather have the poor poorer. "
[Dame Margaret Thatcher]

Socialists of every stripe wrong-headedly target the gap between the wealthy and the poor – as if the gap is indicative of gross inequality, itself a result of oppression from the white patriarchy. Former President Obama blithered on in this fashion whenever he made pejorative references to the “one percent” of America’s wealthy as he busily went about heavily taxing them.  It is amusing, as well as ironic, to have one of those “one percenters” now occupying the Whitehouse as President while average wages for the poor have steadily risen and unemployment rates have dramatically decreased across all sectors of society.

New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern, also holds the same view as Obama (of course):

"I was raised the daughter of a policeman, and was a product of the 1980s where New Zealand went through a rapid period or privatisation and economic liberalisation. We called it Rogernomics after our Finance Minister of the time, in America the same phenomenon was called Reaganomics, and the impact on working families was similar. Jobs were lost, manufacturing moved off shore, regulations removed and the gap between rich and poor rapidly expanded."
[PM Jacinda Ardern]

But “equality” is not just a focus for socialists in economics, they use the term more broadly as a kind of moral weapon to push for equality in all aspects of life, such as gender pay equity and female quotas across boardrooms, school and tertiary administrations, hospitals, sporting, media and industry jobs and almost all other public and private institutions. As well as so-called gender equity, they also give a lot of attention to the issue of diversity (ethnic and sexual) in these same institutions – another superficial yard-stick of virtue used to measure the levels of fairness and inclusivity operating within them.

Anybody living in a Western country in the last 100 years can expect equality before the law (the right of a citizen) and equality of opportunity (the right to pursue achievements based on individual merit).  But this cultural environment of corporate and institutional peer-pressure to feign an image of fairness, is a rank communist attitude, disguising itself as something virtuous, but it’s not.  It is insidious, as Dr. Jordan Peterson takes the time to point out in this article.

Where might it end?  

An adorable couple from China, John and Julia, lived with our family for two years while they waited to be granted political asylum in New Zealand, as the 1980s drew to a close.  I was then expecting my second child and John fussed over me like a devoted mother hen, always checking on my condition, often placing a gentle hand on my belly while saying, “You have good healthy baby inside! I know!”  And I did.  John had been a skilled surgeon and obstetrician living in Beijing throughout the rule of the communists.

In the name of “fairness” and “equality” in the hospital he had worked in, John was suddenly demoted to a janitor and the janitors were suddenly promoted to obstetricians and surgeons – and he had to stand in the room holding a mop while watching the horrific results. Their only son fled to Taiwan and tragically disappeared, which hastened John and Julia’s flight to New Zealand.  We were together watching the news on TV when Tank Man demonstrated in Tiananmen Square and I’ll never forget John shooting to his feet in tears of excitement and fear. They became much loved, extended members of our family, but sadly, their quest for asylum was not successful. John and Julia were deported back to China and we lost contact.

Hyper-vigilantly proportioning people round our work places is not a natural flow of talent being allocated where it’s duly deserved.  No.  This is a morbid obsession with equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity and it does not bode well for a society when ideologues meddle with one in such a way. 

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer" ​​​​​​​​​​