Cuddly Kiwis not so sweet Andrew Bolt 21oct05
MORE sad news for the shame-Australia crowd. New Zealand isn't more enlightened than us, after all.
It was for a while, though, when Labor Prime Minister Helen Clark took in 131 Afghan "refugees" from the Tampa that our own Government turned away just before the 2001 election. What a fuss was made. In Dark Victory, their melodrama on the Tampa, Leftist David Marr and co-author Marian Wilkinson described our own Prime Minister as a thug who used "crude racism", and won thanks to the "xenophobia" of the "less-educated".
In contrast, New Zealand's leaders "prefer to find ways of demonstrating that their country is a more civilised place than Australia". They were "braver" over immigration and their people more "relaxed".
David Fickling, of Britain's Leftist Guardian, claimed -- in comments republished by the Sydney Morning Herald -- that Australia was now "better recognised as the unfriendly island" and tourists reportedly favoured "the seemingly more benevolent destination of New Zealand".
The website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees likewise reported that Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler "pointed to the fact that while tourist numbers in Australia have fallen, New Zealand is on the up and up". It helpfully added the moral: "Wellington's immigration policies are softer than Canberra's . . ."
But, alas, New Zealand is no longer a smooth stick with which to beat the rough Australian dog.
Helen Clark this week named as her new foreign minister Winston Peters, the New Zealand First leader whose support she needs to cling to power after last month's election.
Peters has fine qualities, I'm sure, but none to make a Marr, Wilkinson, Fickling, Wheeler or UNHCR official call him a fine spokesman for their "civilised" and "softer" New Zealand.
Here, for instance, is what he's said about Muslim immigrants: "These two groups, the moderate and militant, fit hand and glove everywhere they exist. Underneath it all the agenda is to promote fundamentalist Islam."
Here is what he's said about immigration: "We are witnessing the Balkanisation of our country . . . We are being dragged into the status of an Asian colony and it is time that New Zealanders were placed first in their own country."
And here is his welcome to arrivals: "We say to migrants -- bring your talents, your energy and yes, your own heritage -- but become real New Zealanders."
Let him explain why: "We place our country at risk by bringing in thousands of people whose views are formed by alien cultures and rigid religious practices."
SOME will say Peters, of part-Maori ancestry, says no more than the hard truth. Others -- a Marr, say -- might now call him a thug who uses "crude racism" to appeal to the "xenophobia" of the "less educated".
To which I expect Peters would reply as he did in 2002 -- that he'd expect just such sneers from a "smart alec, arrogant, quiche eating, chardonnay drinking, pinky finger pointing snobbery, fart blossom".
But the point is not that Peters is terribly frank or frankly terrible. It's that we again see how fragile is the evidence so often used by commentators to prove our especial wickedness.
Honestly, you'd think such people suffered from . . . what is the opposite of "xenophobia"? You know, when you love to hate your own?
-- Jim Union Against Multiculty
"Abolish Multiculty and String Up The Traitors!"
