A brief impartial history of New Zealand
Sunday Star Times Feb 10 2019
Simon Bridges says he supports compulsory teaching of New Zealand history, so long as it's impartial. Fair enough too!
The last thing we need is trained professionals bringing their lefty bias into it. Face the front, class, here's a short impartial history of our great nation.
As everyone knows, the absolute best place on earth is New Zealand especially when the National Party's running the show.
New Zealand as we know it really got started in 1840 when a treaty gave Mum and Dad colonisers the right to buy a bit of land and put in the hard yards and earn the rewards that go with success.
There were some wars, then Kiwi Mums and Dads were able to just get on with it. In New Zealand, the thing that matters most is being able to just get on with it. The other important thing is buying land, waiting a while, and selling it.
When people first came here it was all just hills covered in trees, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the racket the birds were making, but once everyone got on the with the job of putting in the hard yards to get the rewards, all the rimu and totara and kauri came down, and Kiwi Mums and Dads and giant run-holders were able to put sheep on the hills and become the hardworking backbone of the economy.
Then in 1870, the first game of rugby was played in Nelson and from then on New Zealand was definitely the best place in the world to live.
Then Julius Vogel borrowed great piles of money to build railways and things, and of course, it all turned to custard, and there was a long recession, and it just goes to show the best kind of government is a limited government where all you do is build roads and cut taxes.
For a while, Kiwis used trains because of all the money that had been blown building railroads all over the place but then the Wright brothers invented cars and trucks, and obviously, we never looked back.
The next big thing that happened was a Kiwi punching above his weight came up with the idea of putting a fridge on a ship and we started sending cold mutton to England, and of course, they couldn't get enough of it because our cold mutton is the best food in the world, and so hard working kiwi Mums and Dads got on with the job of sending meat and wool to market just like people did in Roman times.
Then we gave women the vote, which was probably a good idea if you don't mind your Helen Clarks and your Jacinda Arderns.
Then there were two world wars, and our boys brought great honour on us, and we will never forget them, which is something we say in April on ANZAC day but not so much in February on Waitangi day, when we say why dwell on the past, we should look ahead to the future.
In the 1930s, the Labour party started a depression. They were not in power, but they were definitely around when it happened, and everyone knows they're terrible economic managers so it must have been something they did.
Finally, in 1936, the National party was founded by people who definitely had nothing to do with the depression going from bad to worse. Meanwhile, Labour came to power and blew all our money building affordable houses and making a welfare safety net and giving people economic security.
Then in 1960, National got back in and we got TV and our beloved Coronation Street and our beloved Chesdale ads and eventually politics on TV, and next thing you know people are on the box saying we shouldn't play footy with South Africa because Apartheid is bad, and also we shouldn't have nuclear testing in the Pacific because that's bad too, and the National party stood right alongside proud Kiwis who believed this once it became the right thing to say a few decades later.
And that's really what history teaches us, isn't it? In the end, it doesn't matter whether you did the right thing or not; the important thing is to make sure you get your story right.