NZ First’s candidates are a real mixed bag, but Casey Costello is one of the best.
I have spent much of my life thinking about what it means to be a New Zealander.
I am Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hau, and Ngāti Wai. I descend from Tāmati Waka Nene and Patuone, both of whom were signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi and early leaders of the idea that Māori and Pākehā had entered into a shared political future.
On the other side of my family, I descend from Anglo-Irish settlers who arrived here in the 1860s.
I am proud of all of that. I know where I come from, and I know the stories of my ancestors. But none of those things makes me one bit more or less entitled to call this country home than any other New Zealand citizen. My ancestry is part of my personal story.
It is my citizenship that makes me part of our national story. Because, first and foremost, I am a New Zealander.
Citizenship should be the great equaliser. It’s the sacred promise that however your family arrived here, whatever your race, religion, or background, you stand alongside every other New Zealander as an absolute equal before the law and within our democracy.
It is a principle New Zealand First has defended consistently: one law for all, equal citizenship, and a country in which your political rights do not depend on your race or ancestry.
And I believe that principle is going to matter enormously in the next Parliament.
When I joined the police as a 20 year old, I took an oath to uphold the law without favour or affection, malice or ill will. The law is not supposed to ask who you are before deciding how you should be treated. I have carried that solemn oath beyond my time in blue.
Equality doesn’t mean we all have to be identical or forget where we came from. It simply means ancestry should neither elevate you above your fellow citizens nor diminish your standing among them. You shouldn’t need the “right” bloodline to have your voice heard, and you shouldn’t ever have to apologise for who your ancestors are, no matter if they arrived in a waka, ship, or aeroplane.
But, I’ll be honest, right now, our democracy faces a real turning point.
We have watched for years as an agenda of race-based division has tried to fracture our country into competing categories of citizens with different political rights. New Zealand First has been steadfast in attempting to hold back the tide, but there is only so much we can do against the bigger parties.
In November we need more seats.
The bigger, well-funded parties will compromise when the pressure gets turned up. We’ve seen it happen before. New Zealand First is the only party with the courage to hold the line.
But courage doesn’t pay for billboards, ads, or town hall meetings. If we are going to fight back against this tide of division and win more seats in November, we need the firepower to do it.
Other parties seem to think that citizenship is just an administrative detail, a passport, or a box to tick on a form. One that means little and can easily be doled out.
It means much more than that. Citizenship is a commitment to a country.
It’s the decision to join a national community and say, “This is my nation too. Its future is my future, and its democratic institutions are mine to protect.”
That is why New Zealand First has always stood for one law for all. And why we accept and respect both the rights and the responsibilities that come with belonging to the group called New Zealanders.
New Zealand First believes citizenship itself deserves to be respected and protected.
We do not believe New Zealand should continue drifting towards a system where people are divided into political categories according to ancestry. Nor do we believe there is anything unreasonable about saying that the most fundamental democratic rights should be connected to citizenship.
If you are deciding who governs New Zealand, who writes our laws, who spends our taxes and what direction our country takes, citizenship is a natural and meaningful threshold.
That does not diminish the contribution of permanent residents or migrants. Before entering Parliament, I spent years advocating for exploited migrants. I have seen first hand the enormous contribution people from around the world make to New Zealand.
People can come here, build businesses, raise families, contribute to their communities, and make New Zealand their home. But citizenship should still represent something distinct; the formal decision to join our nation. A privilege, honour, and responsibility.
Otherwise we should ask ourselves:
What does New Zealand citizenship actually mean?
New Zealand First believe it means equal standing before the law, rights accompanied by responsibilities, and participation in a common democracy.
If you believe that, if you refuse to let your citizenship (or fellow New Zealanders’) be downgraded into a second-tier status based on race, then sitting quietly on the sidelines is no longer an option.
Believing in equal rights isn’t enough anymore. We need you actively in this fight with us. We need supporters delivering leaflets in their neighborhoods, placing signs on their fences, and talking to their friends and family before it’s too late.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Ursula von der Leyen have stated that they will not hand over Greenland to Trump.
