Many, if not most people recognize this quote: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation and every city or house divided against itself, will not stand.”
Abraham Lincoln used that biblical quote in his famous election speech against slavery. As Lincoln said when questioned about the propriety of using that quote in his speech, replied - “the proposition is indisputably true.” That was in 1858.
Fast forward 163 years later.
There has never previously been this proposed form of overt and legalized segregation in NZ yet the co leader of the Maori party Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the Government was getting rid of racist provisions in our electoral laws. Ms Ngarewa - Packer does not explain how applying a new and obvious racial preference in electoral law does not qualify as having more than just racist overtones. It is unclear whether the Maori ward representatives will even be required to take the oath of office which require all elected candidates in Otago to, quote “faithfully and impartially and according to my skill and judgment, execute and perform in the best interests of the region”. That oath of office is now likely to pass into its own form of political backsliding as the decaying institution of Local Government fails to uphold the principle of genuine representative democracy. Every local authority is the servant of the people. The powers given to Local Government are to increase the local authority’s ability to serve all the people and to increase its capacity for such service. It is not, nor should it ever be about named selective service.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that Ngai Tahu have quite recently filed proceedings in the High Court to claim ownership of most if not all fresh water in the South Island. It follows that the North Island tribes will follow suit should the Ngai Tahu case be successful. It should never be possible for anyone; even for preselected Maori ward representatives placed on the Otago Regional Council (for example) to speak, let alone vote in their own interests. Two duly elected rural ORC councillors were recently prohibited from representing their constituents on Plan Change 7 (water) as they were deemed to have a vested interest in this plan change. It therefore is not possible under any test of reasonableness, for Ngai Tahu to also sit around the council table on this most important issue. The issue of management of fresh and coastal waters is said to be of real importance to Maori, just as it is to rural folk whose cultural attachment to a local river is undeniable. This is where the rural /urban divide was shaped and amplified. There is always a number of elected, yet unprofitable councillors, sometimes known as eggshell politicians who will fail to understand the consequences of this particular Government action and the importance of their compliant reaction to it. If a ward is to be based on ethnicity why not have all wards employing the same principle to place youth, elderly, Pacifica, rural, sexual orientation, immigrants etc so as to have even more diversity on councils? Councils are now so dysfunctional that barely a week goes by without another report of further upheaval within the current system of Local Government.
This particular issue will undoubtably cause great disharmony within our society, but it need not if we are prepared to remember the greatest of all speeches on the issue of representation. It is an object lesson for us all. It occurred one August day in 1963 in front of 250,000 people. It was a speech that will also pass down the age. This extract is especially relevant.
“I have dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged -not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”. Martin Luther King.
Here in New Zealand some 57 years later our Government legislates that people are indeed to be judged but only by the colour of their skin.
Sometimes we really do need to protect our country from our Government.
Fast forward 163 years later.
There has never previously been this proposed form of overt and legalized segregation in NZ yet the co leader of the Maori party Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the Government was getting rid of racist provisions in our electoral laws. Ms Ngarewa - Packer does not explain how applying a new and obvious racial preference in electoral law does not qualify as having more than just racist overtones. It is unclear whether the Maori ward representatives will even be required to take the oath of office which require all elected candidates in Otago to, quote “faithfully and impartially and according to my skill and judgment, execute and perform in the best interests of the region”. That oath of office is now likely to pass into its own form of political backsliding as the decaying institution of Local Government fails to uphold the principle of genuine representative democracy. Every local authority is the servant of the people. The powers given to Local Government are to increase the local authority’s ability to serve all the people and to increase its capacity for such service. It is not, nor should it ever be about named selective service.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that Ngai Tahu have quite recently filed proceedings in the High Court to claim ownership of most if not all fresh water in the South Island. It follows that the North Island tribes will follow suit should the Ngai Tahu case be successful. It should never be possible for anyone; even for preselected Maori ward representatives placed on the Otago Regional Council (for example) to speak, let alone vote in their own interests. Two duly elected rural ORC councillors were recently prohibited from representing their constituents on Plan Change 7 (water) as they were deemed to have a vested interest in this plan change. It therefore is not possible under any test of reasonableness, for Ngai Tahu to also sit around the council table on this most important issue. The issue of management of fresh and coastal waters is said to be of real importance to Maori, just as it is to rural folk whose cultural attachment to a local river is undeniable. This is where the rural /urban divide was shaped and amplified. There is always a number of elected, yet unprofitable councillors, sometimes known as eggshell politicians who will fail to understand the consequences of this particular Government action and the importance of their compliant reaction to it. If a ward is to be based on ethnicity why not have all wards employing the same principle to place youth, elderly, Pacifica, rural, sexual orientation, immigrants etc so as to have even more diversity on councils? Councils are now so dysfunctional that barely a week goes by without another report of further upheaval within the current system of Local Government.
This particular issue will undoubtably cause great disharmony within our society, but it need not if we are prepared to remember the greatest of all speeches on the issue of representation. It is an object lesson for us all. It occurred one August day in 1963 in front of 250,000 people. It was a speech that will also pass down the age. This extract is especially relevant.
“I have dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged -not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”. Martin Luther King.
Here in New Zealand some 57 years later our Government legislates that people are indeed to be judged but only by the colour of their skin.
Sometimes we really do need to protect our country from our Government.
Gerry Eckhoff is a former councillor on the Otago Regional Council and MP.
3 comments:
Absolutely right. We’re in a strange world where racism is described as preventing racism. My MP is a Maori, Simon Bridges. I was pleased to vote for him, great bloke and an excellent MP. I am of European descent, five generations of my family born here since my great-grandfather arrived here from Scotland in 1872. How anyone can claim some sort of status in this country greater than mine and the vast majority of the 5 million is mystifying.
"People tend to emphasise the colour of their skin when the content of their character is singularly lacking" -- Peter Hemmingson
When ethnocentric part-Maori who have raised up one group of ancestors while trampling down another to identify monoculturally as "Maori" refer to 'racism' what they actually mean is placing it under new management.
Theirs.
Black American political economist, Thomas Sowell – one the most important though largely unsung public intellectuals of the last 100 years – had this to say about ethnocentric part-Maori and their white liberal stooges:
"Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonise those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments."
“One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.”
When ethnocentric part-Maori refer to ‘racism’ what they actually mean is placing it under new management.
Theirs.
"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage” – Ayn Rand
Racism is today often conflated by the ignorant with simple bigotry, which it is not. Principled opposition to unearned racial privilege is not racism. Nor is it typically evidence of bigotry.
There is only one race. The human race. Much of what is commonly referred to as "racism" is actually ethnocentricism.
And the most disgustingly bigoted, ethnocentric people in this country are part-Maori who have raised up one group of ancestors while trampling down another to identify monoculturally as "Maori," chopping whole branches out of their family trees in order to do so.
These people are best-described as “brown supremacists,” since their agenda is to elevate their ethnocentric self-interest above our common citizenship. This is classic Nazi “blut und boden” [blood and soil] racial supremacism. Think: “Aotearoa is Maori Land,” which I’m sure we have all heard many times before.
Those who believe in a single standard of citizenship, colourblind government, and the abolition of unearned privileges for part-Maori are the complete opposite of their ethnocentric opponents.
But the actual racists have carried out a clever "bait and switch,” and conned the liberals seeking public virtue-signalling and moral preening opportunities into accepting their redefinition.
As black American political economist, Thomas Sowell, reminds us: "Sixty years ago if you believed everybody should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, you were a radical. Thirty years ago, you were a liberal. Today, you're a 'racist.'”
Racism is a different beast altogether. It occurs where a group of bigoted, ethnocentric individuals get together to colonise or create a system affording them separate, different, or superior rights to everyone else on the basis of group membership.
Thanks Anonymous, I enjoyed your commentary as well as Gerry's
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