THE New Zealand political establishment is in a panic as former Labor and National Party politicians defect to the nationalist New Zealand First party – the equivalent of Australia’s One Nation.
But one of those MPs, the former Labor Party cabinet minister Stuart Nash, has been forced to resign as a candidate for the seat of Napier because of “wrongspeak” in a leaked private text message.
Nash was one of five Labor and National Party MPs who have recently jumped ship to New Zealand First. Former National MPs Harete Hipango-Brownlie and Alfred Ngaro attended NZ First’s 33rd annual conference in South Auckland on July 18th.
Speaking at the conference, Nash named two other Labour stalwarts who have gone to NZ First – former MPs Rino Tirikatene and Dover Samuels.
Nash said his and the Tirikatene families were two staunch Labour families with “old Labour values that still ran strong through his veins”. “Like other former ministers – my mate Dover Samuels, the Honourable Shane Jones – we didn’t leave Labour, Labour left us.”
Nash said Labour was a “pale reflection” of the party his family once represented. “Labour used to stand up for those that work the hardest, now they stand up for those who complain the loudest. Labour built the first state house, now they defend those who trash them.”
“The first education policy that Labour announced is that boards of trustees once again must give effect to the treaty, to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi,” he said. “How does that drive educational attainment?”
The so-called Treaty of Waitangi principles are the Indigenous Left’s spin on the historic treaty in which the Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty to the British Crown in 1860. Their dishonest spin on the document is that the chiefs wanted “co-governance”, which is the same scheme being pushed by Australia’s radical indigenists.
Last month Nash was forced to resign as a candidate for NZ First for the “crime” of speaking in a manner deemed to be “sexist” and “mysoginistic”. In reality, the comment was insensitive, inaccurate and little more than a political jibe at National Party MP Katie Nimon, who he called lazy for taking nine months off work on full pay after her pregnancy and birth. She took six months off.
The comment was made in a private text message sent to former National Party minister and notorious leftist Chris Finlayson, an avowed enemy of New Zealand First, who leaked it to the media.
Finlayson, as Attorney-General and Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, sold out everyday New Zealanders to the campaigns of radical Maori separatists, giving them total control of a national park and areas of coastline that were previously accessible to all New Zealanders.
NZ First leader Winston Peters, who shares power with the Nationals, posted without comment on social media that Nash had resigned and the resignation had been accepted.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, grovelling to the PC mob, ruled out Nash from serving as a minister in a government he leads. He earlier Christopher Luxon called Nash’s comments “sexist”, and said Nash was channelling the “manosphere”.
Nash caused a similar PC uproar last September when asked by an interviewer on the Platform to define a woman. Nash’s response was: A “person with a pussy and a pair of tits”. He apologised for that comment and also for his latest verbal swipe.
Nash held the seat of Napier for Labour for three terms before he was sacked from Cabinet in 2023 by then-Prime Minister and current Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who, like his former leader Jacinda Ardern, epitomised the woke Labor Left.