Keith Melville

I hereby revoke my recent self-imposed retirement from Beacon letter-writing having just read Dave Stewart’s shockingly distorted and inaccurate letter on Wednesday in which he claims the Act party was borne out of divisions in the National party.

He opens by claiming that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s comments on the ructions in Te Pāti Māori were farcical to the Monty Python level, when you consider both National’s coalition partners, NZ First and Act, grew out of splits within National.

I am not an Act member nor an Act voter, and my motive for countering his tirade is from the view of a long-retired journalist, who still retains an interest in journalistic integrity and accuracy.

Dave seems to have forgotten that Act grew mainly out of divisions in the Labour party and from Labour’s massive defeat to National in the 1990 election when Labour’s neo-liberal faction, known as the Backbone Club, led by Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble, and other Labour deserters, had chosen to form a new party with the help of a former National party neo-liberal MP, Derek Quigley.

Omitting any reference to the role played by Labour’s neo-liberals in Act’s formation is either an attempt by Dave, one of Labour’s traditional left wing acolytes from its conservative trade union sector, to rewrite history, or maybe it was just pure forgetfulness on his behalf, or perhaps something else.

Labour was already in turmoil before Act was formed when a former Labour party president and MP Jim Anderton, sickened by Labour’s ideological shift to the right, formed the NewLabour party and won the party’s only seat in the 1990 elections.

In forming NewLabour, by the way, he was assisted by one of our own local lefties, former Whakatāne school teacher Jim Bennett.

Political parties tend to have members with strong views, so it is hardly surprising that they quite often disagree among themselves, be they from Labour, National, At, New Zealand First, Te Pāti Māori or from the Greens.

All our parties have soiled themselves from time to time, but the prize for the one with the biggest dung pile recently must surely go to the Greens.

Among a host of controversies that stand out for the Greens, I am thinking particularly of the non-binary Benjamin (Bussy) Doyle, who resigned from Parliament after strong public criticism and reaction to his queer life choices; the bullying allegations against Elizabeth Kerekere; Golriz Ghahraman’s spate of shoplifting; and the Darleen Tama controversy.

She had refused to disclose allegations of migrant exploitation at her and her husband’s business, and was removed from Parliament as an MP by The Speaker at the request of the Greens.

A list of New Zealand political scandals can be found online on the Wikipedia website. It makes harrowing reading, and is a reminder to all of us of our human frailties.

It is a must read especially for those like Dave, who think politicians of their own political persuasion can do no wrong.