Its election year, so Winston is back on his bullshit, spewing racism in an effort to pander to his voting base of mostly old, mostly white racists. His latest idea? That only citizens should be allowed to vote:
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has announced a policy to restrict voting rights to only those with New Zealand citizenship.To which the short answer is "because they live here, you disgusting zombie".Peters announced the policy at a public meeting in Warkworth on Sunday afternoon.
Currently, legal residents living in New Zealand continuously for a year or more, and whose visa does not require them to leave within a certain time are eligible to vote.
Announcing his new policy on Sunday, party leader Peters said voting "should be a privilege of those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand, and who have made the commitment to make New Zealand their home and their future".
"If you haven't made that commitment or sworn that allegiance, we are happy to let you live here permanently, but why should you get a say in how this country is run or governed?" he said.
The longer answer is that Aotearoa has a long tradition of recognising that everyone who lives here should have a say in the future of this place. Its been the case for over 50 years now, and its part of our democracy. And one of the reasons for it is that we were late to establish our own citizenship, and thus had to deal with a huge population of migrants from the old imperial center, who had made lives here, belonged here, but never had to do any formal paperwork to do so. And so, when we had to seriously grapple with that in the 1970's (thanks to Britain deciding that people it had invaded and oppressed and passed laws saying they were British whether they liked it or not, suddenly weren't British after all, especially if they might actually want to exercise their right to live in Britain), the easiest way of doing so was simply to delete the words "He is a British subject" from the 1956 Electoral Act, reducing the qualification to simply being "ordinarily resident in New Zealand" (plus the usual stuff about living here for a year and in the relevant electorate for a month etc). And then, once we'd passed our own citizenship legislation, the law assumed the form we know today, recognising voting rights for New Zealand citizens as well as permanent residents.
Ironically, the group protected by that transition - old British migrants who came here in the 1950's and 60's - are one of the cores of NZ First's support today. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if some of them still aren't citizens (because they have never had any need to be; they live here and they belong here).
The other irony is that when Winston talks about how voting "should be a privilege of those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand", he would effectively exclude almost all native-born New Zealanders from the electorate. Because if you were born here, you've never had to do anything of the sort! The only people who have actually "sworn allegiance to New Zealand" (in reality, to a foreign monarch who lives on the other side of the world) are immigrants who have made a conscious choice to become citizens, and weirdos (soldiers, police officers, and MPs). That might be Winston's vision of a perfect democracy, but it isn't mine - or, I think, Aotearoa's. In a democracy, everyone gets to vote. Its that simple. And people who try and undermine that need to be de-elected.
