An Open Letter to the National Party

The benign face of National: Ideological extremism, in alliance with radical Maori Nationalism, threatens to destroy the National Party's "brand" in exactly the say way that a similar combination destroyed the much-loved, New Zealand-based aid organisation, Corso.

Dear National Party Member,

I wonder how many people belonging to today’s National Party remember Corso? Older members of the party may vaguely recall Sir Robert Muldoon’s savage critique of Corso back in the late-1970s, but among the younger members of the National Party the name probably doesn’t ring any bells at all.

That’s a pity, because as I watch what is happening in today’s National Party I am strongly reminded of the political tragedy which overtook and ultimately destroyed the once-mighty Corso brand.

Corso is, of course, an acronym. The organisation began its life back in 1944 as the Council of Organisations for Relief Services Overseas. It’s charitable mission was to gather much-needed clothing and footwear for the millions of people around the world which the Second World War had uprooted and impoverished.

These needs persisted after the war and by the 1950s Corso had become New Zealand’s pre-eminent overseas aid organisation. It's annual appeals attracted donations from tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders from all walks of life. By December 1964 Corso had raised more than £4 million in cash and dispatched more than £8 million-worth of clothing and footwear to the world’s poor. The organisation boasted thousands of volunteers and was universally respected as the quintessential Kiwi charity: practical, non-political, down-to-earth, effective.

The radicalism of the late-60s and 70s precipitated a sequence of dramatic changes in Corso. Increasingly, the charitable model of overseas aid was being challenged. "Give a man a fish", went the oft-quoted slogan, "and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will feed himself for the rest of his life." A powerful left-wing element followed this anti-colonialist philosophy into Corso.

By the end of the 1970s the organisation – now thoroughly politicised – had decided that "justice begins at home". Rather than assist the poor overseas, Corso determined to tackle poverty right here in New Zealand. Not surprisingly, this radical change of direction attracted the ire of Prime Minister Rob Muldoon. In 1979 government support for Corso was withdrawn, and the amounts collected in subsequent public appeals plummeted.

Worse lay in store for the beleaguered organisation. Throughout the 1980s Corso was steadily infiltrated and eventually taken over by radical Maori nationalists and their Pakeha supporters. Led by the Harawira family, the radicals insisted that Corso recognise and promote tino rangatiratanga – the Maori right to self-determination. To prove its bona fides to the cause of the tangata whenua, Corso undertook to devote two-thirds of its aid budget to New Zealand-based (which usually meant Maori) projects.

When Corso workers and supporters objected to this takeover they were subjected to excoriating verbal and, on at least one occasion, physical assault. By 1990, the organisation was little more than a hollowed-out shell. New Zealand’s largest and most successful home-grown aid organisation had been destroyed: initially, by ideological extremism; and finally, by radical Maori nationalism.

If you, the members of the National Party, do not rouse yourselves, then your own, once-proud, political brand will suffer the same fate as Corso’s.

Already, ideological extremism has driven thousands of members out of the party. And now those same extremists, working hand-in-glove with radical Maori nationalists, are getting ready to tip both your government and your (dramatically re-structured) party organisation into the same death-spiral that destroyed Corso.

Never forget that it was with the best and most noble of intentions that Corso’s demise was set in motion. Men and women of good-will, seeking only what was "right" and "just", allowed themselves to be persuaded that the organisation’s steadily dwindling institutional membership was a case of "fewer, but better". And those who complained; those who warned; those who pleaded with them to reconsider the direction in which they were dragging Corso; were dismissed as being either pathetically misguided, or avowedly racist.

National, as its name attests, has always seen itself as the party not of one class, nor one race, but of the whole nation. When New Zealanders believed that, and when National’s policies reflected that, its membership numbered close to quarter-of-a-million.

In May 2010, can you honestly claim that National is governing for the whole nation? Can you really affirm that its brand is safe? And is it even remotely credible to suggest that, if it doesn’t immediately cease conniving in the dissolution of its own country’s core institutions, it will be in any position to win a general election in 2011?

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 14 May 2010.