Source: ACT Party
The Haps
Parliament didn’t sit last week, so your property was safe. ACT’s MPs were out, including at the Northland Field Days, Auckland’s Round the Bays, and holding public meetings as far south as Invercargill. This Thursday David Seymour and Todd Stephenson are holding a public meeting in Queenstown, details here, and on Friday Simon Court is in Hokitika, details here.
The Week the World Changed
Lots changed last week, or at least long-telegraphed changes were spelled out more in neon lights than dots and dashes. New Zealand’s insularity is famous, if there was a nuclear war in Europe the Herald would still lead with Auckland property prices, or whether the All Blacks will be free-to-air.
Insularity is all fine, most of the world is a hellhole most of the time anyway. But insularity can’t protect us from all hells, and some of them have got closer in the last week.
The protection we’ve had from the seas and friendly navies is ebbing away, even though we’ve relied on it since humans arrived here.
Part I: Nobody else could get here.
Part II: Only the British could get here.
Part III: Only the Americans could get here.
Depending on your perspective, the British part might be a mixed blessing, but on the whole we’ve built one of the most successful societies in history with little care for our security.
If that changes, we’re going to have very different things to think and worry about. We’ll have to think about confronting others who want to dominate and perhaps kill us for the first time in generations. Even the Herald will need to sharpen up.
The Trump-Zelensky-Vance conflagration was extraordinary. Trump is elected and the U.S. is a sovereign nation. They can act however they like, so we’re not passing judgement. We’re just trying to think through what it means for our sovereign nation. We don’t think there’s enough public debate about this to be ready for the world we’re entering.
After World War I the U.S. went isolationist, when World War II began the German Army was ten times larger than theirs. By the time they had U-Boats off the Eastern seaboard and planes bombing Hawaii, they were arming up again.
After World War II they decided to keep policing the world. It led to an extraordinary period of peace and prosperity (maybe it will be known as the second Elizabethan era, after QEII). Now the Americans are out of that game again. The Oval Office conflagration was perhaps just the neon-lit spelling out of something that’s been coming a long time.
Add that together with the Chinese ‘taskforce’ of three ships (and one sub?). It was not extraordinary, it just hasn’t happened here for a couple of generations. Ships that could easily rain down munitions on New Zealand cities, with there being little we can do about it, is a new thing to living New Zealanders. Perhaps nuclear-powered American ships weren’t that bad after all?
The Cook Islands appear to be shifting their allegiance or at least trying to eat their cake and have it, too. Their comprehensive strategic partnership with the Chinese Government appears to open the Cooks up to Chinese investment and development, as well as resource extraction. It might allow a workforce of Chinese nationals in the Cooks that would give the Chinese Government reason to ‘protect’ them. That would be a crisis.
From a defence and security point of view, the Cook’s gambit is a stationary version of the ships. The Chinese Government is asserting that the South Pacific is in their sphere of influence, and that’s a different proposition from the democratic British or Americans doing it.
It all adds up to our country needing to change footing. Muldoon once said ‘New Zealanders will never vote on foreign affairs.’ We’ve been shielded, but as our shields ebb away, we will need to change our stance.
A lot of questions become much clearer.
Could we afford to ban oil and gas exploration?
Could we afford to shut the country down for an extravagantly long time over COVID?
Could we afford to create a binary state based on a false interpretation of the Treaty?
The answer was always no, but now there is another reason why.
The New Zealand project needs to sort its internal problems with a lot more maturity, so we can face up to external ones. Another reason why we cannot afford a Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori fiasco, and why ACT must keep the alternative Government bold.
