Key responds to cabbage boat threat

 I just knew it was all related somehow

The Listener gives Banks perspective

" I think you think I came up the river on a cabbage boat.

Which he did not.

Hurtle back a few months to the days after the election, and look at what Banks told the press pack:

I didn’t come up the river on a cabbage boat. "

From Scott at Imperatorfish

" John Key announced today that the law would be changed to put a stop to the influx of boatpeople and put an end to the massive crisis threatening to overwhelm New Zealand's immigration system.

Officials have long been concerned about the potential threat to civilised society that illegal refugees pose.

Although no illegal refugee boats have ever reached New Zealand, the dangers posed to a nation of four and a half million people by a boatload of desperate and wretchedly poor brown people, assuming they survived the immense sea voyage here, is too dreadful for many to countenance.

Experts say that brown people often speak a language other than English, eat different foods, and engage in unusual religious practices.

It is feared that if even one refugee boat managed to somehow make it across thousands of kilometres of difficult seas, the few dozen ragged and desperate brown people that set foot on New Zealand shores would corrupt our morals, destroy our economy with their bludging, and speak all funny funny. "