Labour on Dunne and Nazis

Stuff reports:

A Labour MP drew parallels between the National Party and Adolf Hitler as controversial legislation allowing partial asset sales passed by a single vote.

The Opposition benches cried “Shame!” yesterday as National’s junior whip Louise Upston cast the decisive proxy vote of UnitedFuture MP Peter Dunne, which saw the legislation pass by 61 votes to 60.

Mr Dunne was not at Parliament for the vote because he was attending the funeral of his son’s girlfriend’s mother.

In a statement, he said he had intended to speak in favour of the bill at its final reading, which was in the “best long-term interests of the country”.

Opposition MPs continued to insist Mr Dunne had misled voters over his views on the partial asset sales plan.

Labour’s state-owned enterprises spokesman Clayton Cosgrove said Mr Dunne’s vote was “a travesty of democracy” because he had said he was against the sale of water resources before last year’s election.

Labour are trying to rewrite history. Not a single voter in Ohariu thought a vote for Peter Dunne was a vote to stop asset sales. Dunne’s reference to water resources was about water supply companies, not about power companies that use water.

Check  this thread out from May, where you have quotes from leftie activists before the election about how they need to stop Dunne as he is a vote for asset sales, plus this explicit quote from Peter Dunne:

in the event National puts up its mixed ownership model for the electricity companies and Air New Zealand we would be prepared to support that, provided the maximum was 49%, with a cap of 15% on any indivudual’s holdings

So Labour is clearly lying when they say Dunne misled voters. In fact that is exactly what they are doing, and are masters of.

Some believe the Government has no mandate for the sales because several polls have shown a majority of voters are against the policy.

Labour’s Wigram MP, Megan Woods, said yesterday: “Hitler had a pretty clear manifesto that he campaigned and won on … does this make what he did OK?”

Oh dear, where do we start with Dr Godwin.

Let’s even put aside the implicit comparison of partial asset sales (a policy scores of left wing governments around the world has also implemented) to the Nazis, Hitler and the Holocaust. Frankly if Dr Woods want to make such stupid comparisons, I urge her to carry on doing so. They reflect far more on her and Labour, than anyone else.

But what really annoys me is her woeful knowledge of history. Only those with a superficial scraping of history repeat the line that Hitler was democratically elected, as if he won a majority of seats. He was and did not.

In July 1932 the Nazis got 37.3% of the vote and just 230 out of 608 seats. In November 1932 the Nazis got fewer votes at 33.1% and 196 seats only. They made up only three of the 12 Cabinet members. He then seized power through various ways.

Also the assertion that Hitler had a clear manifesto he implemented is also woefully ignorant of history. Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party campaigned as an anti-big business and anti-capitalist party, with a later focus on anti-semitism and anti-marxism. Their 25 point plan did say Jews can not be citizens, and would be foreign guests who could be expelled. But that is a long way from saying “Oh yeah, we will exterminate them also”. People may be interested in some of their other policies:

• We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
• We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
• We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
• We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

UPDATE: Dr Woods has apologised.