The S-Files

Crossing the Line

Contra Celsum nominates the following political parties for an S-Award: the Maori Party, the United Future Party, the Greens, ACT and the National Party.

Citation:

It is a sad, sad day in the life of our nation. Yesterday, the Privileges Committee of Parliament voted to censure the suspended Foreign Minister for lying to the House and for knowingly filing a false financial return. In the face of overwhelming evidence of corrupt behaviour on the part of the Foreign Minister, the parties named above voted to censure the Foreign Minister. The doubly sad aspect is that the vote was not unanimous.

Two parties did not vote to censure: the Foreign Minister's own party (NZ First—an unbelievably cynical name, given his self-serving unethical behaviour) and the Labour Party, which has deliberately and overtly placed party political advantage above considerations of ethics and morality in government.

As we have argued consistently, Mr Winston Peters has been a destructive and cancerous influence in our nation for many years. Further, it is likely that he will face criminal charges in the future over even worse corruption, and that he will likely end up in jail.

What is sad beyond any of this is the spectacle of the Prime Minister and her party clinging to Peters and supporting him, thereby approving his lying and unethical behaviour. Such approbation can only mean that the Prime Minister of this country believes his behaviour is acceptable for a Minister of the Crown.

The Privileges Committee has required that Mr Peters provide corrected and accurate returns declaring all gifts he has received over the past several years. There will be many. It will likely turn out that some of these gifts came from businessmen he has subsequently "thanked" by bestowing monetary favours upon them—tax payers money.

The Prime Minister has a duty to approve such gifts--otherwise they must be returned to the donors. The Privileges Committee said the hiding of the gifts was deliberately and knowingly done. She will, of course, give approval—or more likely, she will simply ignore them, thereby giving tacit approval.

If the Prime Minister has such a low ethical standard for her ministers; if she believes that the interests of the nation are thus well served; if she believes that bribery has a place in government; if she believes that partisan political posturing is more important than the vital fabric constitutional government; if she is willing to aid and abet lying and deceit, then she is truly beneath contempt.

The public (unwisely) will tolerate for a time political gamesmanship on the part of our representatives. We say unwisely, because such things ought never to be acceptable in the processes and responsibilities of government. Ultimately governments deal in justice, however that might be conceived, and justice is too weighty a matter to be manipulated or used for the playing of personal games.

But politics and government in our age of the glorious flowering of secular humanism has been allowed to devolve into perpetual gamesmanship. But generally this has been restrained by an understanding on the part of representatives and government officials that there is a line—albeit invisible—but a line nonetheless which must not be crossed. That line has to do with the genuine interests of good government, the structures of good government, and the good of the overall country.

In the past there may have been debate from time to time over where exactly that line fell. But crossing that line for the sake of political posturing was unacceptable. But over the past ten years we have seen a different kind of politician emerge. These are people who deny that there is such a line at all, and that all government consists in gamesmanship and posturing for personal advantage. At root, such politicians believe that the country can be damned—or more accurately, they come to believe that their desperate venal grip upon power is conterminous with the true interest of the country. They, themselves, have become the line. Government has become feral and personal.

The Soviet Communists used to speak about the cult of personality. They meant by this a governmental condition where the person of the leader was all determinative. The Prime Minister of New Zealand has now descended into the cult of personality. She has determined that the political risks prevent her from joining other political parties in censuring Mr Peters for unbecoming conduct. The damage done to the rule of law and to the fabric of government are mere collateral damage. The country be damned: the career of Helen Elizabeth Clark is more important.

We continue to believe that the nine years of successive Clark administrations will eventually be judged by history to have been the most corrupt, venal, self-serving, and mendacious government that New Zealand has ever had the misfortune under which to suffer.

We hope that in our lifetime, and that of our children and grandchildren we will never see the like again.

The Maori Party, the United Future Party, the Greens, ACT and the National Party: S-Award, Class I for actions in the course of duty that were Smart, Sound, and Salutary.