That was my first real experience of a Winston Peters rally, and I say the word "rally" because it had that air about it.
That was my first real experience of a Winston Peters rally, and I say the word "rally" because it had that air about it.
IT'S unusual for me to hit the same editorial subject twice in a row, but I found New Zealand First leader Winston Peters' Masterton visit and speech a bit disturbing, and more should be said about it.
Perhaps the lowest point in his speech was holding up a real estatemagazine for an Auckland market. It was printed entirely in Chinese. I suspect it was to illustrate two points: that we have people in this country whose mother tongue is not English, and those people buy houses.
That was my first real experience of a Winston Peters rally, and I say the word "rally" because it had that air about it - enhanced by his attempts to stir up an aged audience with the concept of too many immigrants coming to New Zealand.
What worries me is that, for a moment, it seemed like people in that audience forgot we live in a country where people speak other languages, and even read literature in other languages. We live in a country where it is pretty difficult to immigrate to. We live in a country where people don't arrive here by a leaky boat, but go through a rigorous process. I remember one of my journalists in Wellington, who was French with perfect English, getting hassled by Immigration for wanting to live here. I got hassled for hiring her. Why didn't I hire a New Zealander, I was asked? Because she had a driver's licence and these other young idiots didn't, I said.
New Zealand is not thousands of years of pure breeding - if there is such a thing. We are what we are, a country that celebrates new generations of motivated, successful, intelligent people who make our country healthy. We've been doing it for 150 years.
In Wellington, my neighbours were Malaysian, French and Indian, leading me to attend my first Hindu wedding.
My wife and her children are immigrants from England. There's a feeling of being around people who are powerfully motivated to succeed, raise families, earn money and pay taxes.
A minority of people cause problems in New Zealand. But people don't make a country wrong. They make a country right. Immigrants are a sure-fire asset, bargains that keep on giving. What on Earth have you got to be scared about?
