Like a cockroach

Winston Peters is back, and spewing his usual stream of racial hatred and immigrant-bashing:

New Zealand had suffered a "tsunami" of immigrants, he said, and large scale immigration could not be justified when 140,000 people were out of work.

He said the country was being taken for a sucker and immigrants were not needed in many occupations. Some immigrants were using New Zealand as a "transit camp" before moving to Australia.

The burden of immigrants on welfare and pensions was bemoaned.

"These people are feasting on your pension pie ... the pension pie you and other Kiwis paid for."

And which they pay for too. But the idea that immigrants work and pay taxes (or have family members who do - something considered perfectly legitimate by the elderly women who fling their knickers at Winston) seems to be lost on him.

This is National Front stuff. And its presence as part of New Zealand political discourse is something that every kiwi should be ashamed of. The positive side is that the vein of prejudice Winston is mining is dying out (literally). But we'll have to put up with it for a few more years yet.