By Olivia Pierson
​[First published on Insight@theBFD 14/11/19]

Universally, the word ‘betrayal’ is often understood to be synonymous with the word ‘politics,’  and for good reason.

No better recent examples can be cited than the betrayal of the NZ First kingmaker party when Winston Peters chose to enter a coalition with the far-Left Labour and Green parties. 

Now the National Party has also completely sold-out NZ voters (again) with their sycophantic virtue-signalling to climate alarmism, made manifest by their full support of the Zero Carbon Bill which passed in parliament last week with National’s unanimous blessing. 

Kiwis have to face an appalling fact: apart from David Seymour’s ACT party, there exists no ‘centre’ or ‘centre-Right’ conservative influence in NZ politics, and it’s been that way for some time.  Seymour’s signature issue has been his End of Life Choice Bill, so for conservatives who strongly believe in the sanctity of life, voting ACT rubs painfully against the grain of their conscience.

Enter the viability of the New Conservative Party, led by Leighton Baker and his deputy, Elliot Ikilei. 

I’ve never met Baker, but I’ve seen and heard Ikilei speak on several occasions in person, and also in the media, and my overwhelming impression of him is very positive. He’s passionate, decent and strong, he likes to debate, has a booming voice and clearly relates well to young men and boys, especially those from Maori-Pacifica backgrounds.
 
Ikilei is a freedom of speech stalwart, recognising that no other liberties can ever be fought for, or upheld, without that particular liberty being intact. 
 
Speaking of liberties, the New Conservatives advocate for a sovereign NZ nation with one law for all, a nation which governs itself, not a nation which submits itself to orders and decrees from the ominous body of the United Nations. 

On the education front, the New Conservatives promote some much needed normalcy. 

Recognising that state schools now resemble leftist, radical indoctrination camps rather than sound institutions of learning, they believe that “gender identity should not be taught in schools, apart from offering help for those struggling in that area.”  

“Parents should be notified of any intended school based sex education programmes including details of any aspect which may be contentious. The right of parents to withdraw their children from school based sex education must remain. Sex education should not be started in schools until after Year 9. Family Planning should be required to include abstinence and long term relationships as the option with the statistically proven best outcomes for all in their syllabus, or lose their funding.” 

They also fully support the continuation of charter schools and correspondence education for families who desire it.  They want parents, not the state, to have more control over the minds and education of their own children.

Regarding Emissions Trading policy, the New Conservative position is: 

“New Conservative rejects the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which imposes significant taxes and costs on everyday New Zealanders whilst not achieving or improving environmental outcomes.

New Conservative believes that a better way to reduce emissions is to set achievable targets and then supply funds to research institutes and universities to find emission solutions that help industries meet their targets whilst still remaining in business. An existing example of this is the Zeecol application in dairy farming.”

Since our government is hell-bent on replacing the farming sector with forestry, the Zeecol application is an ambitious system of zero-impact farming which converts all effluent and waste into energy, feed and fertiliser that farmers buy back at a much lower price from the company. Zeecol went into liquidation in 2018, indicating how challenging converting to zero-impact farming can be, but the company’s original founder, William Mook, claims that “NZ needs this” and “it will happen.”

On the New Conservative website, remarkably they have a stated policy on NZ and Israeli relations, which includes:

• Establishing a NZ Embassy in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem immediately
• Recognising Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights
• Apologising to Israel for NZ’s sponsoring of Resolution 2334
• Strengthening trade ties with Israel to allow both nations to benefit from technology gains
• Upholding the right for Israel to defend itself and its borders
• Immediately ceasing any NZ funding of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian  Refugees (UNRWA)
• Encouraging and financially assisting Arab nations to accept and grant full citizenship to refugees.

The support that the New Conservatives intend toward Israel is truly commendable – and entirely rare in NZ politics – while also displaying a belly-full of guts. 

In December 2016, National dismally caved to the UN and voted against Israel (Resolution 2334) for building settlements on the West Bank, land that Israel acquired when the surrounding Arab nations, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, tried to obliterate their country by initiating the 1967 Six Day War. 

In stark contrast to National, New Conservatives display their understanding of the truth that Israel was the victim here and not the aggressor. The West Bank was rightfully retaken by Israel – a tough lesson for Jordan – but there it is; don’t damn-well make war on your neighbours! (Especially if they happen to be the tough survivors of a recent mass genocide.)

The New Conservatives’ point about “encouraging and assisting Arab nations to accept and grant full citizenship to Palestinian refugees,”  is a point that must be made again and again, though never is.  The Arab world boasts adherence to the great “religion of peace” – Islam.  Why then has it wilfully failed to take in their own brethren and co-religionists by not offering them citizenship in the 22 Islamic nations which make up the Arab League?

While we happen to be touching on the topic of other cultures so very different from our own, the New Conservatives also take a bold stand on their immigration policy by stating, “We believe that those who choose to immigrate (to NZ) should embrace New Zealand’s culture and not try and change it.” 

“New Conservative will ensure there is no acceptance or allowance of Sharia Law, in any expression, as well as any non-constitutional jurisdictional authority, in New Zealand.”

Confronting the Sharia creep into Western law systems – from the UK to Germany –  is a salient insight on the part of New Conservatives and something they wish to avert NZ from: specifically, parallel legal councils based on another culture and religion.  All immigrants to NZ must be accountable as citizens under only one legal code.

The New Conservatives seem to understand what the most essential role of government is – to secure and maintain the natural rights of citizens:

“New Conservative believes the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to justly pursue their own goals whilst ensuring support is available to those in need. We believe in Justice for all and that punishment should fit the crime. We believe in hand ups, not hand outs, and that when people are empowered to use their natural skills and abilities, the nation will be strong.”

The New Conservatives squarely occupy the ground of the Christian-right. Regardless of whether voters are believers or not (I happen not to be), the Christian cultural heritage of NZ is undeniable and for the sake of balancing-out the mixed bag of secularism currently embedded in this nation’s politics, on both the Left and the Right, to see a party uphold old-school values in keeping with our traditional heritage smacks of something that is somewhat restorative. 
 
This is the sort of small party I would like to see grow into something substantial enough to replace NZ First as a ‘kingmaker’ party.  If the New Conservatives do manage to achieve something close to that status, the swift currents of radical Leftism in both major parties may be tempered by some much-needed decency and good old-fashioned values.

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

On this week’s podcast: 

November 19th is International Men's Day. Do we really need to celebrate it? The same day is also the United Nation’s World Toilet Day. Pure coincidence, of course...

More reference to the fires that are all caused by global warming; only if you follow the fiction and ignore the facts.

This week I chatted with Olivia Pierson, author of “Western Values Defended; A Primer”. It was a very interesting and enjoyable discussion.

And our favourite segment; your feedback with Carolyn, producer of LS Productions since 1988.
​
File your comments and complaints at Leighton@newstalkzb.co.nz

By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Insight@theBFD 7/11/19]

It’s obvious that the Democratic Party is committing suicide by the hand of its own rank corruption; duplicity, deceit, double-dealing and above all, its humiliating lack of self-awareness, have brought it down to the unfathomable depths of political depravity that we are currently witnessing.  

Another thing that’s obvious is this latest attempt to impeach President Trump over a phone call with Ukraine’s Zelensky is nothing more than an extension of the exorbitant, taxpayer funded Russia Collusion inquiry, which yielded nothing more illuminating than that a handful of memes were bought on Facebook.  Now it’s the Ukraine Collusion inquiry. Everyone is forgiven for yawning.

Rather than fight the Republicans at the ballot-box in 2020, it has become so clear to Democrats that they can’t win that they have to invent a “high-crime and misdemeanour” charge to hang on the President instead. This is so dirty a tactic, especially when one considers that former Democratic VP Joe Biden actually boasted on camera that he blackmailed the previous Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor investigating his son’s dealings with corrupt gas company Burisma, by threatening to withhold a billion dollars-worth of U.S loans when he was in office.

President Trump wanted Ukraine to make inquiries into what they knew about the digital firm CrowdStrike, the firm hired by the Democratic National Committee which claimed that the Russians hacked the DNC server, kicking off the Special Counsel’s inquiry into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and any Russian collusion. James Comey admitted in his June 2017 testimony that the FBI failed to examine the DNC servers and relied on a third-party contracted by the DNC: CrowdStrike, who “confirmed” the Russians hacked the server.

CrowdStrike were hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign counsel, Marc Elias.  It was also Marc Elias who hired Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to write the fake and lewd “dossier” on Donald Trump using information gleaned from the Russians. In other words, the DNC engaged in Russian collusion to bring down a political opponent, then projected their deceitful tactics onto that opponent.

Frankly, it would be utterly remiss of President Trump to not try to get to the bottom of these questions about the troublesome DNC server, especially if he has information that Ukraine have access to it and the FBI admit to failing to examine it.  These scurrilous tactics formed the basis of an attempted coup to bring down his presidency. The Dems are now using the president’s curiosity into these happenings in order to stage yet another coup attempt against him, this time in the form of impeachment over “the phone-call.”  They’re that desperate and afraid of the next election. The  nervous breakdown they suffered after the 2016 election result has now developed into full psychosis. 

Democrats know they cannot get the president convicted with their fully partisan impeachment attempt, because the Republican-dominated senate will block it, but Dems just want his name smeared relentlessly through the grist of the media-machine for the next entire year in order to draw any attention away from his spectacular achievements, such as: the record low unemployment rate, rising wages, sweeping prison reform and a renewed sense of vigour and American patriotism re-energising the Republican Party.

Driven to hysteria by their hatred for the president, the far-left of the Democratic party foolishly unmasked itself and came out swinging in the form of the blatantly communist “squad,” led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announcing their Green New Deal policies and more: no airplanes, no cows, no meat-eating, no petrol or diesel cars, no nuclear energy, no oil drilling, no policing, no ICE, no borders – and definitely no capitalism!

Old-school Democrats who still want to vote for a half-sensible, working-class champion now have no candidate within the ranks of the Dems to back. They may have found one in Hawaiian congresswoman and war vet Tulsi Gabbard, but she has been smeared by Hillary Clinton and her posse, displaying their vindictive insanity once again, as another “Russian asset” – whatever that means. This is actually so bad that it’s good since Gabbard is friendly toward the Green New Deal, indicating that at heart she is for co-opting a great economy to make it resemble something akin to Venezuela’s.  I did say ‘half-sensible.’  

So those old-school Dems will most likely vote for Trump in 2020.

If folks need any instruction as to what America would look like if the Dems ever got hold of all the levers of power again, look no further than the great liberal experiment that is today’s California.

Only a couple of weeks ago, 2 million Californians were left without power as PG&E, the state’s largest utility company (which has recently filed for bankruptcy), shut down its power transmission so as not to spark fires in the strong seasonal winds.  These fires swiftly turn deadly because the state is not clearing the copious, tinder-dry dead brush and trees from its forestlands due to environmental policies enacted over the last 45 years. 

PG&E blamed the preemptive power cuts on “climate change.”

Californian historian and commentator, Victor Davis Hanson, wrote a column last week titled: “Is California Becoming Premodern?” Hanson writes:

“California’s three most powerful politicians — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom — are all multimillionaires. Their lives, homes and privileges bear no resemblance to those of other Californians living with the consequences of their misguided policies and agendas… Yet California is nearing the logical limits of progressive adventurism in policy and politics.”

Then there’s California’s homeless crisis, about which Hanson writes: 

“Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.”

Hanson explains that millions of middle-class Californian taxpayers have “fled the state.” Due to millions of welfare recipients and newcomers, who need “enormously expensive state health, housing, education, legal and law-enforcement services,” the stabilising influence of the fleeing middle-class is “sorely missed.”

Out of the state’s 53 congressional seats, Hanson says only seven are held by Republicans – and that makes California a one-party state. Premodern indeed. The poverty and crime stats are so bad for the liberal stronghold of California, to say nothing about the devastation that the wild-fires leave in their wake, it wouldn’t be a surprise in the slightest to see an electoral swing back in favour of Republican governance.  

If this were to happen, along with ‘Blexit’ (the mass black-exit out of the Democratic Party a-la Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk and Kanye West), the Democratic party would be consigned to the dunghill of history, leaving the GOP to naturally fall into two separate factions: the centre (think Ann Coulter and Ted Cruz) and the centre-left (think Geraldo Rivera and Ivanka Trump), leaving the far-left to openly stand for communism (they’ll call it a ‘social democracy’) instead of pretending to be supportive in any respect of a constitutional republic.

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