Election year has started with a bit of a bang with Socail Credit leader Bruce Beetham gaining a seat in Parliament at the expense of a pill-pushing potato millionaire for National and a slow talking rugby coach (retired and defeated) for Labour. The pie-in-the-sky guy had hardly mounted his push bike when he lost his deposit.

Soon after. National's invisible MP for the last six years, whatsisname Downie, came out of hiding to announce that he was leaving the party and would remain in the house as an independent.

Mike Minogue and Marylin Waring, having provided the only coherent debating force opposed to the Government in Parliament for the last two sessions were reported pleased at having the load lifted and it looked like being a boomer year for listening to YA during sessions. But there's always a killjoy.

The Labour "opposition"—normally inaudible in Parliamentary broadcasts over normal static—was recently declared an endangered species.

Here's why. With mud on his bright red face, wide and Lange was wishing he'd eaten his words instead of all those rich foods which are so cheap at Bellamy's, after his support for the neolithic abortion legislation last year blackened his liberal reputation. At the top the Rowling stone was gathering no moss, no support and no credibility while decending at great speed. Further it was rumoured that the great white hope of "democratic socialism" Gerald O'Brien was busy discussing trade in Taiwan.

What's it All About

But the new year has brought more than the hope of a bit of fun listening to Parliament. To most New Zealanders what it's brought is bloody awful—price rises, disappearing rights and nuclear visitors. No amount of debate will hide that.

Recently there have been reports of schoolchildren crayoning little black moustaches on little sneering faces then donning jackboots to frogmarch to the tune of "Muldoon defend New Zealand". Apparently it's got something to do with guarding ballot boxes in the coming election. The reports could be a bit exaggerated but the real danger to democracy posed by the Muldoon Government's policies can't be exaggerated at all. In Hugh Templeton's politesse we are heading for a "Latin American solution".

Today, kiwi jokers can have their phones listened to by a state snooper who also has the right to finger their mail and personal possessions. It could happen to anyone at anytime and probably is. That's the new SIS legislation. But why men only? It's worse for women. They are subject to all the provisions of the SIS Act but also if they are on the DPB they can expect to be spied on by members of the Social Welfare Department, informing neighbours and plain peeping toms who will be counting orgasms and reporting back that another benefit should be cut.

That's just what's happened to our right to privacy. But under new legislation and government practices we've also lost the right to strike, to independently run our own organisations (injunctions and Judicature Amendment Act) and to decide whether to have an abortion.

The progression of this country's worst post-war recession and the inevitable Government policies of belt-tightening for the poor and leaving the fat on the rich have taken away the right to live without fear of poverty, our right to work and our right to free and open education.

But really we can't complain, We're Kiwis. If you are not a New Zealand citizen you have no rights at all except the right to be deported without reason or compassion. Air-Commodore Gill is now reported to be busy writing a book entitled "1,001 bullshit reasons for deporting non-nationals (except wealthy Vietnamese refugees) by Ministerial decree and thus removing the need for an Immigration Dept."

The Seas Around us

Talking about foreigners there are about 4 billion of them out there and all in all they've got things in a bit of a mess. Mainly, the two big powers can't seem to stop themselves building nuclear weapons and submarines and sending troops into places like Viet Nam and Ethiopia to prop up advanced type Muldoonist regimes. In fact, given what they're doing now they'll probably end up using New Zealand for practice once they've tired of causing trouble in these more exotic countries.

And we've already had nuclear warships and ANZUS involving us in sweltering under a tatty US nuclear umbrella . . . there's a saying that if you put up an umbrella on a fine day it's sure to rain—and it has.

The people who told Czechoslovakia to take a couple of detentes before meals to make their problems go away are stepping up trade links, fishing rip-offs and military activity. Just recently they sent a research ship all the way to New Zealand to find out what our weather is like so they can tell the folks back home that it's nice and sunny out here. Perhaps they can't pick up Tina on TVI back there in tall story land.

Things to do . . . People to Unite

Seems most of our problems are coming from this recession, depression, represssion thing which is more in season than Parliament. And that seems to come from the big powers dominating the economy with IMFs, and multinationals, and Petrodollars and BP and Shell and GMs and so many initials you'd need a dictionary to list them all.

To me the best start we could make would be taking ol' Gill's policy and reversing it. Instead of sending home all the ordinary foreigners who are o.k. we should pack the bags of the Comalcos and IBMs and the big powers and shove them on the QEII next time it comes round. They'll be at home there and won't bother us any more. Then we could clear off the foreign fishing boats and get down to running our own economy in our own way.

After that we could turn off the Parliamentary broadcasts for a while and get together to get back our rights and living standards by doing it ourselves and not relying on a pack of mouthing minnies. If you look at it it's going to be us, not National or Labour that's going to defend democracy and restore living standards. It's going to be us not those two that will pull us out of the orbit of the superpowers and start an independent foreign policy.

Sure the National Government's bad. It's National which is taking away our rights and cutting wages; we want to oppose these things but like hell I'm not going to tell anyone to vote Labour, wild horses couldn't make me ... .

Look at Mick Connelly. He said National had joined with the Communists to destroy New Zealand. Look at Rowling. He defended Comalco against Muldoon! He defended Japanese imperialism against Muldoon! The oil companies against Muldoon! Joe Walding reckons we should work harder and accept pay cuts. They're going to bring in their own bugging legislation to replace the SIS act. They were the first to have dawn raids on overstayers. They were the first to de-register unions.

Labour was no good the last time or the times before (remember the black budget, peacetime conscription, sending troops to Malaya) and it's gone so far right since then it's caught up with National.

You can't rely on Labour. Not at all. It might seem nice to get rid of National but everyone knows that Labour, faced with the same economic situation, will follow exactly the same polciies. It's not pledged to fighting for economic independence. In fact, going by Tizard's latest speech at Vic, it's not pledged to anything at all.

You can look at when wages have gone up—strikes have done it. You look at why we got out of Viet Nam—mass marches. How did we stop peacetime conscription civil disobedience. Governments don't do anything for free. You've got to fight them. Remember how many demonstrations it took to get the STB out of Labour?

Watch those parties in the coming months. You won't find any difference in their politics. You won't even be able to distinguish the rhetoric.

Political Correspondent