Our Sovereignty is at Risk – Sold to the Highest Bidder

 By Ann Chapman

For eighteen years, while I was an elected representative on the Kapiti Coast District Council, I was a silent supporter of the left.

I felt that in the matter of local government my allegiance to any political philosophy was irrelevant. I was elected across party lines and would behave as such.

I retired from local government in 2010 and now feel much freer to express my views.  And I am now doing so because I have never in the 30 years since I returned to New Zealand felt more scared that our sovereignty was at risk to the highest bidder. And that the divide between the rich and poor was growing daily.

‘Stakes never higher’

It was prudent to be a silent supporter of much of the social, economic and environmental policies of Labour and the Greens. That self imposed constraint has now gone. This election I plan to be much more vocal. I don’t believe that the stakes have ever been higher.

Even the excesses of Ruth Richardson do not terrify me as much as another term of a National/Act Alliance. They will act much as an international financial gambler does – buy and sell to the highest bidder for a quick, profitable return no matter what the long term effects on the country, the community or the individual. The consequences of a quick profit have never been a matter of concern for the gambler.

In contradiction to the wisdom of economists and businessmen of different hues, this government is continuing with its agenda of asset sales. In defiance of logic for long term income and benefits, the government is after the immediate return. The gambler’s instinct seems strong in the corridors of power.

Evidence of the past ‘forgotten’

The evidence of the past is conveniently forgotten when assets were sold, run down and the benefits of ongoing income from those assets leaving New Zealand.  We had to buy those run down assets back, build them up again for there to any benefit for New Zealanders. We gained no long term benefit from those sales. Others did and took their gains off-shore.

What the gamblers in charge of New Zealand are doing again, is blindly following the dream-maker, the pied piper of the quick and dirty profit where the imperative is the quick buck. The long term effect is denying New Zealanders their health, safety, sovereignty and security. We will be following the pied piper, the gambler into a bleak future, taking our children and their heritage into a country we no longer own or can call our own.

Beware of the gambler in his smart expensive suit when he campaigns to sell our children’s future for the quick return for he has no stake in our country’s future and will deny my grandchildren theirs.