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Another Don Brash flip flop
1 August 2006
Another Don Brash flip flop
Internal Affairs Minister Rick Barker used Question Time today to highlight yet another Don Brash flip-flop.
"Dr Brash's list of flip flops just grows and grows. Now we can add the issue of citizenship, says Rick Barker. "While his National Party colleagues believe New Zealand's oaths should not be changed under rules of citizenship, Dr Brash is calling for the opposite.
Dr Brash believes potential citizens of New Zealand should "share bedrock values" and “we may need to look at the oath of allegiance, for example, to work out what is it that people are signing up for when they become New Zealand Citizens."
According to Brash if you don't share the 'bedrock value' of "legal equality of the sexes" then "perhaps New Zealand isn't the place you should move to" . Mr Barker wonders whether Brash has said this to his good friends the Exclusive Brethren, who believe that "Fathers are the breadwinners. Mothers stay at home" .
Dr Brash's colleagues have a completely different view on citizenship oaths.
National Justice spokesperson Dr Richard Worth believes New Zealand’s current citizenship oaths are " timeless oaths” and that “a country like ours with a short history we should not move to change them without good reason" .
Dr Worth is backed up in this view by National Party Minority report on the Oaths Modernisation Bill, which stated that "we cannot support the bill going forward in respect of the Citizenship and Parliamentary Oaths" .
"National operate in a policy void and this makes it even more inexcusable for Dr Brash not to know his Party's policy. New Zealander's deserve better, said Rick Barker.
"Previous Dr Brash flip flops include scrapping the super fund (then not), getting rid of our nuclear free status (then not), and scraping four weeks annual leave (then not).
"Gerry Brownlee's bid for leadership in the House was evidently supported today when he directed Dr Brash to sit down on a point of order. Perhaps this is a sign of change, and given Brownlee's stature, a change of substance, said Rick Barker.
ENDS
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