Muldoon not Hitler

Your front page appraisal of Muldoon (July 17) was relatively well-reasoned and your assertions were supported in the main by quotations and examples. Too bad you couldn't sustain this approach until the end. As far as I can see, you blew it in the third-to-last paragraph. You wrote: "If Muldoon gets in as Prime Minister in 1975 we can look forward to history repeating itself as the Maori racial minority becomes openly and institutionally persecuted like the Jews were in Germany of the thirties."

Surety you don't believe that! Admittedly, it's hard to prove you wrong — the main problem with refuting predictions and extrapolations is the difficulty of proving the 'accuracy or otherwise of events yet to come. Yet I am convinced your reasoning is unsound.

Firstly, the oppression of Jews in Hitlerite Germany was the result of a number of social and economic factors far removed from those in this country. Ask any historian. Secondly, while Muldoon is certainly a right-winger, he Is not Hitler and New Zealand is not Germany. Neither is the National Party a consortium of tyrants and villains. On many social issues, the Labour Party proves itself to be more puritancial and reactionary than its counterpart. (Ask any homosexual, or dope-smoker, or film fan!).

Contrary to what you say, voters do not have "a duty....to keep National out of office." If the National Party is returned to power in 1975 or 1978 it will be because a great many New Zealanders wanted it back. There will be many reasons for this, including the rising rate of violent crime. Most voters are concerned about violence and aware of the disproportionate Polynesian contribution to it.

This concern will continue. It will hardly be palliated by editors labelling Muldoon and his minions racists, or trotting out the usual excuses for assaults by Islanders. In my book, Maoris are New Zealanders and many Islanders are not.

If an Immigrant cannot adapt to New Zealand conditions and fit peaceably into the nation's lifestyle, he has no right to come here, let alone to ask the New Zealand taxpayer to support his family. If an Islander is convicted of a serious offence against New Zealand law, why should he not be deported like any Irishman, Bolivian, Turk or Portuguese? After ell, if a New Zealander commits a crime in someone else's country, is he not treated similarly? It's a matter of common sense — and a matter of racial equality!