Response To ANZAC Day Protests
ACT's Rural Communities and Veterans spokesman Mark Cameron responds to cancellations and protests of ANZAC Day commemorations in Wellington:
How bloody lucky I am to live in rural New Zealand. Today's very well-attended dawn service in Dargaville was a perfect, dignified commemoration of the courage of the ANZACs.
Meanwhile in Wellington... Officials cancelled the National Commemoration Service because of a bit of wind, as if that would have bothered our veterans.
Then when Kiwis gathered anyway, anti-Israel protestors showed up to promote their own agenda, and another group dyed the bucket fountain red and pasted demands to stop "normalizing ANZAC violence".
These pitiful attempts to detract from ANZAC Day are not at all indicative of the feelings of mainstream New Zealand. But of course activists in Wellington get outsized attention from the media.
Next ANZAC day I'd like to see the news cameras get out of the cities, and come experience an ANZAC service in Dargaville, or Taihape, or Lumsden. Because regardless of nonsense in Wellington, in rural New Zealand We Will Remember Them.