Ed Said - We get the message

 

“Send them a message” was the catch-cry and ‘they’ did – in no uncertain terms – as Winston Peters gained a resounding win ousting National from representation in the recent Northland by-election. So what now?

Winston has promised to wipe the Kai-para Council Debt, build railways and cre-ate jobs in a package valued at around $400 million. Once the back-patting is done, and he has resigned as list MP and it has been accepted, then his replacement is con-firmed, there will be barely two years left of this term to achieve anything.

Generally speaking, MPs are not elected for themselves, they are elected to prima-rily overthrow the ruling party then are re-elected by the plausibility of their excuses for not achieving what they promised. This by-election was no different as it quickly appeared that, of the contenders, Winston would be by far the most charismatic and thus the most sought after and, indeed, vot-ers were encouraged by other candidates to vote for him. His slogan ‘Send them a message’ was actually coined by the Labour leader.

I was criticised after my last column for saying ‘it doesn’t matter who sorts the bridges problem or get us ultra-fast broad-band, the ends justify the means.’ This re-

sult is exactly a case in point. In 1983 (Sir) Bob Jones formed the New Zealand Party with the express aim of splitting the vote which caused the overthrow of Muldoon’s National Party in 1984. Nothing is new, it’s all been done before.

Though pledging allegiance to North-land we must realise that in 40 years in pol-itics Winston has done nothing for North-land. He says he is a Northlander yet he forgot Northland with his transport policy for the last election promising rail upgrades all over the country except Northland. He totally forgot us.

Where are the jobs going to come from? Northland has an unenviable record with regards unemployment but also has a number who are ‘unemployable.’ How do you change such a mindset and get people into gainful employment who are often sec-ond and third generation unemployed?

A sweeping generalisation maybe, but remember a couple of years ago when Aus-tralian mining reps came recruiting work-ers and offering big money. Hundreds, if not thousands attended their meetings in the north with dollar signs in their eyes but when possible applicants had been dis-carded for drug offences, criminal records, unpaid fines, no drivers licences, disquali-fied drivers, poor employment records and

no likelihood of handling the specialised equipment involved in mining, the uptake was virtually nil.

It’s one thing to create industry oppor-tunities but it’s another to overcome the at-titude that pervades a lot of Northland and I doubt Winston can do that any better than any of his predecessors.

With regard to Northland roads, they are only a mess basically due to abuse of the Resource Management Act. So RMA re-form is needed and that is less likely to hap-pen with National losing the seat.

Winston himself described his victory as one of ‘seismic proportions.’ We have first-hand knowledge of ‘seismic proportions’ – just think of the Christchurch devasta-tion. It was similar ‘seismic proportions’ by which Winston lost his Tauranga seat.

Winston has always been for sale to the highest bidder. The people have bid very clearly for him but I’m not sure why. It just means that NZ First will pick up a little mo-mentum but it is the Maori Party that will likely hold any balance of power in New Zealand and even if NZ First join with La-bour and the Greens in second place they will become irrelevant once again. Just my opinion but let’s just wait and see, shall we?

Rob