UNITY IN THE SMALL PARTIES OF NEW ZEALAND

or HOW TO FIX A LEAKY UMBRELLA

Although Brian Tamaki is shown in the key image in this article, this is not just about him but about what is needed in this country to produce representatives who will speak for us truly. While writing it, the resignations of four Democracy NZ candidates took place, and it is clear that the failings that many of us see in Brian are not at all unique to him. I write in the belief that we can learn and grow from past mistakes and in the hope that unity in the small parties is possible, and I give one solution that would change completely the present situation if it were adopted.

As we approach the coming election, it is pretty clear what WE THE PEOPLE want and what we don’t want. What we want is not any single one of the existing main parties, neither the uniparty of NationalLabour, nor their variants who collude together in the evil global mafia that is steadily selling our country out to the highest bidder and who can do no more than make promises to arrange differently from other parties the deckchairs on the sinking Titannic. That’s what we don’t want. 

And what we want is an organization pledged to unity that will represent us in Parliament and begin the long struggle to take back this country from the wolves and serpents that have been scurrying and slithering over it virtually unopposed for years. 

What we want can only happen if we are united. So why is this proving so difficult?

The enemy we fight is powerful. But, this time round, taking from it a very large chunk of its territory should be easy. A genuine people’s movement needs only to represent the truth, and the truth –  maligned terribly and dragged through the dirt as it has been – is beginning to stand on its own wobbly legs. We just have to look beyond the confines of this country to see how the lies around government collusion with drug companies worldwide are being revealed, despite determined efforts to prevent this from happening. We are witnesses to the greatest crime in history being uncovered and the greatest sting operation in history exposing the guilty. What is happening is – as they say – Biblical, and, though the whole operation may not be done by October, that is not our concern – we simply need to make our contribution and have confidence that approaching events will come to our assistance. 

That’s easy to say in the abstract, but, as we are learning, this enemy that opposes us is an expert in bringing discord and division. Our enemy – let me just call it the global criminal cartel and I hope my readers will all know what I mean – understands that unity is the one thing that can defeat it. Unity is to it a bucket of hot coals poured over its head, and it will do everything it can to divide us and keep us divided. But haven’t we acquired some knowledge since the Wellington occupation? Shouldn’t we be able to see through the strategies of the criminal cartel and stand firm in the truth together?

Some denigrate elections altogether, saying if you participate at all in them you are making a contract with the enemy and deserve what you get. When you’ve watched a lot of illegal things happening, all sanctioned by our legal (but not lawful) system, it is easy to feel this way. Many I know have this view and I respect them as long as they are not only regurgitating the black pill of despair but are actively working to create the future they want. But to me, it has always been clear that this election – an election that will be different from any we have known before – needs to be entered into at least in part. Even if the enemy cheats (and we know it will), even if winning is hopeless (and of course we can’t win), even if the entire system is corrupt, the whole election process is an opportunity to learn and to educate. The world will not be keeping still while we go into our kiwi election. What will happen here will reflect events happening everywhere else, and if truth is getting a foothold in America and elsewhere, this will see its reflection in New Zealand also. If success does not come in October, then it will come some time after that, and the effort we will have put in will have a bearing on what can happen then.

So how can we create something we can believe in, at least in part? Obviously, if we can’t influence the old corrupt parties, we need to have new ones. But won’t they just dilute our influence? The concept of an umbrella party that would gather them all together seems to be the answer. The umbrella party mechanism gives autonomy to small parties contesting seats in areas where they are well-known but brings voters into a single tent for the party vote. Some estimates say 30% of the country has grave worries about the status quo in New Zealand at this moment. Whatever that number is today, as things get worse and the crimes of the élites are further exposed, surely that number will rise. All that is needed is unity. 

I wrote an article for Counterspin Media in April of this year, as the grassroots organization I’m connected with, Rock the Vote, was considering its options. As a group that had come into existence during local elections, our first focus was on Central Auckland, where the incumbent, Chloe Swarbrick, represents all that’s diabolical in leftist government overreach gone berserk. All we needed there was some commonsense, and, as people anyway are waking up, the seat would be ours. But we also wanted to be involved in the larger struggle for the whole of New Zealand. And so we looked into this umbrella party option. 

As we considered the need to link with other Kiwis beyond our area, FreedomsNZ, if they were able to be true to what they promised, gave us the most hope. They were well-organized and had created a structure where individual parties could exercise autonomy in their own electorates but would not weaken each other by contesting for the party vote. You give your local vote to the group that best represents your interests in your electorate and you give your party vote to the umbrella organization that gathers all those votes together. 

Paul Davie, who later became our candidate for Central Auckland, believes that there can be great differences among the parties in an umbrella group and would have liked it if there was only one policy that all parties held in common – belief in political accountability being achieved through binding citizen-initiated referenda (BCIR). I would have added the need to shore up the New Zealand Bill of Rights so that it could never again be violated as it was in 2021 by the illegal covid mandates. However FreedomsNZ already had nine policies in place – we would have expressed things somewhat differently and with different emphasis in our list of policies, but there was nothing there that we were not in agreement with. 

One thing that we were promised was that Brian would not be the leader of the party. It was acknowledged that his history with Destiny Church would be a cause of concern – that the mainstream media would exploit this. 

But the mainstream media has not needed to lift a finger. A Counterspin journalist who was simply doing the job of a journalist pointed to areas that are deeply concerning to many. I had tried to make Brian aware before the inevitable happened that there would be problems unless the allegations were met in the right way, with mistakes admitted and some things changed, but this was not heard. The tone of the written rebuttal, when it came, was clumsy and aggressive; some were pacified by it but many were not.

Brian in other ways is an attractive figure, absolutely sincere in his concern for New Zealand and articulate in a way that gets people off their chairs. But in the last few weeks he has demonstrated that he has not yet managed to bridge the gulf between two worlds. The first world is where he is comfortable, and that is the world of his evangelical South Auckland church. The second is the political world that he feels he has been called to enter, and in that world things that might be acceptable at Destiny can be simply toxic. People in regular New Zealand do not want authoritarian figures who react to criticism by deflecting from the message and attempting to shoot the messenger – we get enough of this from the leaders of the major parties.

Having allowed testing on his carpark at Destiny is a flaw that Brian could have recovered from if he had emphasised how he had been ignorant at the start of lockdowns, had only slowly come to learn of the harm of testing and was now getting rid of those testing stations and severing his business relationship with George Ngatai. But the second flaw is something that I believe he can’t recover from, and that is the claim he made in 2003 that he would rule New Zealand. Whether or not he thinks that today, it is the perception of that among the voting public that it is the problem. There is video evidence of him making his prophecy and of it being reflected back in even more extreme fashion by a visiting American church leader. Imagine what will happen when mainstream media gets a hold of that!

For a candidate to be successful in such an election as we are approaching, he or she will need to embody the values that the truth and freedom movements adhere to but also be acceptable to those who are slowly awakening to the truth – the wobbly middle that Voices for Freedom talks of – those people like the parents of a friend of mine who are slowly realising that something very bad is going on in this country but who could never support what they perceive as dangerous messianic tendencies present in an evangelical church leader. 

It is possible that Brian finds the way to climb out of the hole he has dug for himself by his bad responses to the Counterspin journalist – that he learns very quickly from the mistakes he’s made. But I have a perfect solution for him if he would listen. 

Brian needs to honour his first promise to us that he does not desire power for himself. He needs to renounce what he said in 2003 as a bit of silliness that all can be subject to and, to prove that he means what he says, state firmly that he will not put himself forward as a candidate for the party vote. This would mean that his leadership would be until October only. Having created FreedomsNZ, he would be a mentor to it throughout the campaign and continue to give valuable leadership, but when the election is over he will go back to his real calling in South Auckland.

If he would later go even further in this direction, he could renounce his co-leadership of the party. Beside the admirable Sue Grey, there would then be a gap into which a number of possible candidates could be drawn to fill it. I can think of one who once founded the New Conservative Party and another who has just become free who is a Wellington doctor who was prevented from working by the mandates, but there would be others. What Brian earlier said – that there was no one strong enough for the job except himself – is just not true. But time should be taken to see who really resonates to the NZ people. 

That’s my suggestion and I make it conscious that it’s mine alone and no one at Rock the Vote or at Counterspin is necessarily agreeing with me. 

If I am tough on Brian Tamaki, it is because the concept of us doing well in this coming election is dependant on him being acceptable to the greatest number of people, and over his handling of Samantha’s interview he did not do well. I believe Brian is capable of changing himself, but I hope he is able to see that to do this he must, at least in part, break from his Destiny Church echo chamber.

I intended to write about DemocracyNZ in this article and to show that Matt King, too, would be called upon at some point to face his own doppelgaenger. And I had been doing some research on Ross Meurant and the influence he may be exerting behind the scenes. But with all that has happened in the last 24 hours, this is not a time to kick a man when he is down, and so that is a topic that I will leave for others.

If my argument is disagreeable to those at Destiny, let me add some words from Saint Paul who should be more acceptable to them than me. “All things work together for the good for they who love God.” It was my grandmother’s favourite saying and helped her pass through the loss of two sons in World War Two. If Brian is able to learn from what has happened, he will see that good things can come from the constructive criticism of others.

And to those who put such an emphasis on Brian, one final question: why do we obsess so much on leaders? They are all human and will all have faults – everyone has their doppelgaenger – but can we see past the mere personality and failings of a leader to identify what he or she is fighting for, even if imperfectly expressed? In the end it might have something to do with us whether New Zealand can win back its freedom and stand again as an independent nation made up of sovereign individuals.