Peters is Nothing But a Pawn

The Legacy of Helen Elizabeth Clark

Several months ago, we argued that Winston Peters was a corrosive and corrupting influence on New Zealand national life. He was, and is, necrosis in a flashy suit. Today, it is widely reported that he will be removed as Foreign Minister of the nation. Over recent weeks, his unorchestrated litany of bellicose lies has become nauseous. Peter's mendacity has become automatically reflexive. Exposing each falsehood, painful.

Behind all this, however, is a much deeper and broader issue. Exposed, now, to open shame is one Helen Elizabeth Clark. We have now suffered nine years of Clark's style of government. Our considered view is that she will be judged by history to have been one of our most ignorant, naïve, superficial, and venally self-serving prime minister's of all time.

For most of her tenure, Clark has been a virtual demi-god. She could do no wrong. She was portrayed as larger than life. She was idolized by the media as supremely intelligent. We were repeatedly told she was politically astute and masterful. Media, overwhelming left wing in this country, saw in Clark a mirror of themselves: they consequently lauded and lionized her because she reflected their own self-glory. They saw in Clark a reflection of themselves.

Women have disproportionately supported her because of her reported integrity and honesty. They trusted her. We know that society loves to have heroes—even in our envy ridden, tall-poppy-hating society. When it comes to heroic political leaders they are quickly made out to be demi-gods. By her own testimony, Clark has been a “popular and competent Prime Minister.” The nation applauded her self-assessment.

Unfortunately, the reality is far from the image. Clark has been an archetypical hollow man. For years she has nursed a secret agenda, one born out of sixties and seventies radical left-wing feminism. She has kept it carefully screened from public view, but then, when opportunity presented itself, she struck. A classic example is her volte-face on the ridiculous and failed attempt to stop parents disciplining their children by corrective smacking.

For public consumption she stated her view that any such ban would be against human nature. Then, when Bradford's Bill presented itself, she threw her full weight behind it, but in a deceitful, clandestine fashion. She quietly ordered that for her government the issue would be “whipped”—a rather ironic term in this instance—which meant that although officially it was to be a non-party, free conscience vote—she required that all Labour MP's voted for the Bill, regardless of conscience, beliefs, or representations from the electorate. Thus, Bradford's notorious Bill was shown up to be Clarkian policy all along. Bradford was just the willing tool.

Clark has done more than any previous Prime Minister, Robert bete noir Muldoon notwithstanding, to shred our tenuous, but vitally important, constitutional fabric. She unilaterally abolished the Privy Council as the highest court in the land. She has deliberately politicised the police force, making it an extension of government influence and power. Her sacking of the incumbent Police Commissioner, Peter Doone was achieved by some of the most corrupt and Byzantine behaviour ever seen in this country, requiring a disgusting awful abuse of power. Using a supine media, she clandestinely leaked falsehoods about Doone being guilty of drink-driving—then, when her lies were published, used the “scandal” as a reason to fire him.

She then replaced him with a more compliant Police Commissioner, one Howard Broad, whose puppy-dog pavlovian like response to the Prime Minister and Minister of Police was evidenced no more clearly recently when the Labour Party used him, against constitutional and parliamentary convention, in a vain attempt to manipulate parliament itself.

We have lost count of the number of times prima facie cases of criminal activity on the part of her Labour MP's have not been investigated by police, despite complaints made. Yet, superficial trivial complaints against political opponents have been investigated and prosecuted with alacrity. These are the kind of things which happen routinely in a police state.

The fact that Clark has been prepared to pervert and undermine one of our most vital constitutional bulwarks—the independence of the police from government interference—for her own venal political advantage, without thought to the damage she is doing to the nation, is evidence of just how dangerous and damaging she has been as prime minister.

A second constitutional convention torn to shreds under Clark's watch has been the deliberate politicization of the civil service. She has turned it into another arm of government advocacy, promotion, and political bias. There is a long standing constitutional convention that the civil service is to be a check and balance upon the government of the day, giving advice without fear or favour to ministers. When decisions would then be made contrary to advice this gives the public the opportunity to make a more independent assessment of the particular merits of both policy and advice. This is why the civil service is called the public service, not a government service.

Clark has deliberately subverted this constitutional convention and has filled senior and middle management positions within the civil service with political appointees who will give the “kind” of advice which promotes and advocates policies and programmes which reflect Labour policy. She has deliberately used public departments as organs of government propaganda and self-promotion. The damage has now been done. It will take years, if not decades to repair—and it may be irreparable.

Finally—and this list is representative, not exhaustive—we have seen Clark lacerate the constitutional convention that electoral changes must have broad, bi-partisan support. Her Electoral Finance Act is one of the most draconian restrictions upon free speech ever seen in modern political history in the West. It was pushed through for her own partisan political advantage, with no attempt at consensus or good faith consultation. It was, “my way, or the highway.”

Now, in recent days, we have heard that Clark has known for seven months that her Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, allegedly received a solicited donation from one Owen Glenn. Then she allowed him to grandstand publicly denying that he knew anything about it, or that he had ever received the money. All of this is now publicly revealed to have been lies.

Clark's defence for this defalcation on her part is that it was a “conflict of evidence”, but that she chose to believe her Foreign Minister. Bollocks. She has a duty prescribed in the Cabinet Manual to ensure that all Ministers of the Crown conducts himself/herself with the highest ethical standards, particularly with respect to conflicts of interest (Section 2.58, Cabinet Manual). This is a most vital and important duty, for it is aimed at preventing corruption in government. This sworn duty she casually laid aside—once again, to prosecute her own political advantage.

It will turn out that Helen Elizabeth Clark—far from being the demi-god as portrayed in her press—was a small-minded, nasty, bitterly envious person who would not think twice about weakening the fabric of the nation for her own petty advantage. Truly, a third world tinpot leader.