Click here for Kiwi Party File 3
The Kiwi Party has made itself known as a “Judeo-Christian Values Party” – although upon a cursory glance of their website I couldn’t find any reference to this. The party’s leader is ex-United Future List MP, Larry Baldock. He is backed up with fellow ex-United Future List MP, Gordon Copeland now serving as Party President, and More FM Radio celebrity, Simon Barnett. The party is strongly pro-life, and I have huge respect for their opposition to abortion. The Kiwi Party has just recently adopted Gordon Copeland’s “Abortion (Informed Consent) Amendment” bill.
I am absolutely in favour of what this bill seeks to achieve. It seeks to take an incremental step forward through the provision of information through counselling before the mother makes a final request to be considered for an abortion in accordance with the current Abortion Law. Below is a diagram of the change the amendment would make.
It’s a great bill, and you can read an excellent short summary of it here. However, it is not going to go anywhere. In another document entitled “Abortion Law Reform in New Zealand; a Political Strategy“, the Kiwi Party outlines its strategy for reforming New Zealand’s abortion law for the better by passing the informed consent bill. Coincidentally, the strategy involves getting the Kiwi Party into Parliament. However neither the Kiwi Party, nor any of its candidates will ever enter Parliament again. This is because they are incompetent and unprofessional.
Baldock’s referendum to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act (subsequently adopted by the Kiwi Party) was a thinly veiled bid to build the platform necessary to get Larry Baldock back into Parliament in 2008 with the newly formed Kiwi Party. It failed in this objective. Baldock’s 2011 Election Bid was to run a referendum seeking to amend New Zealand’s law on referendums so that they would be binding. The question read: “Should Parliament be required to pass legislation that implements the majority result of a citizens initiated referendum where that result supports a law change?” Confusing, huh. Anyway, this referendum also failed in building a strong platform to get Baldock back into Parliament. Last I heard it was 280,000 signatures short of completion, and with only a few months remaining. So what new strategy from the desk of the Kiwi Party? A policy to make a significant improvement in New Zealand’s abortion law.
Let’s be clear. The law would not restrict any abortions. However through the improved system of counseling, it is highly likely that the number of abortions in New Zealand would drop significantly. (over 10% I think).
Earlier this year I wrote Kiwi Party File 1: The Logic of the Campaign for Democracy and Kiwi Party File 2: Can They Be Trusted?, outlining a critical lack of wisdom and integrity in the Kiwi Party. One of the party’s key policies embodies the Socialist ideal of wealth-redistribution through an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. There are also major issues with the party’s Law and Order policy which I have written about here.
In their political strategy document, they write:
Therefore progress can not be made unless the Kiwi Party or some other Party which is prepared to commit to this issue, is elected to Parliament. The Kiwi Party already has a high recognition factor in New Zealand with an independent poll indicating that 8.7% of voters would “likely” vote for the party if they were confident that it could achieve either 5% of the party vote or one electorate seat, thus ensuring its presence in the next parliament.
This 8.7% figure, obtained through “independent polling” is old news. The Kiwi Party used it at the last election… and I have no idea who the independent pollsters were, but they didn’t quite get it right did they… In the 2005 election Baldock received 3.67% of the vote in his electorate of Tauranga. However you have to get roughly over 40% to win in this electorate. In 2008 he received 5.11% of the vote. That election, the Kiwi Party received 0.54% of the party vote, even with their platform, repealing the Anti-Smacking Law being one of the key election issues. How well are they going to do at the 2011 election where neither abortion nor smacking will be key election issues?
I will be writing more shortly about The Kiwi Party; why they should not run at the next election, and why you shouldn’t waste your vote on them.
Dear Andy,
You are clearly a talented, very knowledgeable and passionate young man. You clearly spend much time researching and analyzing information to present on your blog. You articulate your perspective very well and appear to be very thorough in what you are communicating.
I am saddened, however, by the spirit in which you write. I have not given you my name. I write as Tom Citizen. I have done that deliberately because you seem to delight in taking half a story and present it as the whole story at anyone else’s expense to reinforce your personal perspective on issues.
For whatever reason, you seem to have targeted the Kiwi Party, Larry Baldock and Gordon Copeland for the brunt of your criticisms. I am not sure why. It appears to me that these men truly want to bring positive change to society. It also appears to me that you basically agree with the need for change in most of the same areas. Abortion, child discipline, lack of good democracy, to name a few. And yet you choose to throw rocks at these gentlemen, question their integrity, and make assumptions about their motives for doing things, when you really are in no position to do so,
May I suggest that if you are going to accuse others of a lack of integrity, that you ensure that you do a thorough check on your own integrity first? I sent letters out to people whose names and addresses I was sent before the last election. You have failed to tell the whole story on your blog. The petition and the names on the forms are the legal property of Larry Baldock personally. He can write to these people, in his name, about the issue on the petition if he chooses. Nothing unethical about that. And that is what he did.
Although there was nothing on the Petition form to say that the addresses would not be given to others for their purposes, this is a given, as you understand. I agreed to post mail out on Mr Baldock’s behalf. In doing that, I, you and others who agreed to do that, also agreed to destroy the names as soon as I had posted the letters on Larry’s behalf. I honoured my commitment and walked in integrity. I am not sure about you. But it would appear that you may have agreed to the terms on which the names were sent to you, but never followed through on those terms. May I suggest it is not Mr Baldock’s integrity in question here, but your own, if you have not honoured your agreement.
Your blog has not told the whole story of this process and gives the impression that names were sent willy nilly all around the nation with no consideration for privacy at all, which is a grave misrepresentation. I could raise many other issues on your blog as well in which you choose to use inferences to paint these men in bad light, but my time is too valuable to spend on any more. I am sure, if you are truly honest with yourself, you will know what things I am talking about.
I wonder why you hate these men so much? Apparently they claim to live by the same Judeo Christian values that you would claim to live by. Do these values not call us to love one another and believe the best in one another? Do not these values say that if you say you love God but hate your brother, you are talking through a hole in your head?
These values also encourage us to patiently and gently correct one another, and I have attempted to do that here, as I live by those values too. Those values also recognize that correcting a mocker brings a hateful response, while correcting the wise brings a loving response, and that those who accept correction are on the pathway to life, while those who ignore it will go astray.
Andy, you are a gifted man. I personally want to see you walking on the pathway to life, and living a life that encourages and blesses others in love. You have much to offer this nation, but you will never achieve it with a negative focus. May God give you wisdom and grace and reveal himself to you afresh.
With love,
Tom Citizen
Thanks for your comment Tom. I do not hate Larry, or anyone else. When we stood at the petition tables, many people were hesitant to sign as they did not like giving out their residential address or date of birth. Larry told myself and my friends who collected signatures to assure people who signed that nobody other than the clerk of Parliament and those counting the signatures would ever see the signatures. I personally assured something like 1,000 people of this, and only then would they sign.
I’m sorry mate, it’s indefensible. Family First distanced themselves from the Kiwi Party’s use of the petition forms at the time also. I am not out to destroy anyone or anything. I’m simply alerting well-intentioned Christians of the problems within the Kiwi Party, and also – that now is not the time in NZ for a Christian party.