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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Mike Hosking: This Government has lost the room


The joke story of the weekend was the revelation that DOC, as in the Department of Conservation, is handing out money it doesn’t have to reward people for learning to speak Māori .

I say money it doesn’t have because DOC has a multi-million dollar operating shortfall.

What makes the story a tragic tale of our times is that there is no actual requirement in any of the jobs they do for there to be Māori spoken. Tasks are not getting done because they are short of Māori speakers.

This is the insidious Māori fication of the country that has so many upset. There is nothing wrong with the Māori language. Learn it all you want.

But it is not up to the taxpayer, for no specific or particular reason outside of a bandwagon, to foot the bill to pursue a woke ideology.

I note it's not known how many other Government departments are on the Māori train either.

The department doesn’t know what it will cost and they will only have a look at it if asked through the Official Information Act, that well-worn excuse machine the Government has turned into a fine stalling art.

Learning Māori in a job that doesn’t require any Māori at all is similar to this place paying me to learn to juggle.

I might get something out of it, I might argue that the dexterity and coordination has such an effect on my wellbeing it wards off Alzheimer's. But that’s still not the employers job to entertain me, or dabble in my recreational pursuits.

Māori and Māori fication has become an obsession.

The incorporation of everything to do with the Treaty has become wasteful and energy sapping.

People speaking a language that is of no use to them in their work is not a Treaty response. It’s a nice-to-have dabble.

They have failed to see, or understand, that the forcing of anything onto a population is counterproductive.

The trick to any change or mind shift is to argue the case, persuade people, encourage people, lead the way and build a support base.

The moment you cajole, threaten, battle, enforce, ignore, override and generally become overbearing and obsessive, is when you lose the room.

They have lost the room.

And they are using our money to do it.

It’s the swing voter who needs to be riled by this.

Will they be though? Or will this just add to a long line up of shemozzles that get forgotten about come polling day?

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

7 comments:

hughvane said...

Rampant, patronising tokenism, afflicting not only DoC. When does it all end, when does sanity and practicality take over?

Anna Mouse said...

There would literally be no job in New Zealand either in private or public sectors that 'requires' proficiency (at what ever level) in Te Reo Maori.

This is an ideological absurdity.

Yes, learn Te Reo Maori if you personally choose to.

But it has little actual utility that you do so for your own reasons and not those through clear bribery or arbitrary policy.

DOC, like New Zealand has serious problems and likewise we need serious people to sort them. Learning Te Reo Maori is not a solution to DOCs issue and never will be.

Anonymous said...

It has become abundantly clear that Western politicians have lost their integrity, and that government has become something that is done to us, not for us. We have to put them back in their place. It can be done. Rather than face her voters, Jacinda Ardern resigned as New Zealand PM and fled from office. Mark Rutte’s egregious governance created a political party that rose from nothing in 2019 to oust him from Dutch politics. Macron is on the ropes in France. The Irish people are sick of Varadkar. America is waking up to the incompetence and corruption of Biden.

There are a lot more of us than them. So passively resist: don’t break the law, just question whatever you are told. We can’t trust the MSM. We can’t trust our government, civil service or public health agencies either. For three years, they behaved tyrannically – and clearly intend to keep doing so – whilst cladding themselves in the cloak of benevolence, reasonableness and integrity. Everything that was done 2020-21 was at best ultra vires, and at worst illegal. Nothing the government did respected the people, and nothing it did was in any way proportional to the problems posed by that virus.

Anonymous said...

It is not only the money being handed out for speaking te reo but also the amount of time gifted to government workers for learning the langue and attending other cultural uplift activities. This can sometimes equate to 3-4hours a week that is not used for core business and has a direct impact on productivity. We have a ballooning government workforce but reduced outcomes so some in-depth look at productivity will be useful

Anonymous said...

I don't think I have ever heard Mike talk such sense backed up by facts . I'd go a step further and say that some people will become dangerous by the maorification push. It's against free will

Anonymous said...

I didn’t know Maori had all the names now in bold print in the hospital eg. X-ray,Radiology, Cardiology etc.Nowhere in the world have the indigenous people renamed eg London New York Shanghai Sydney etc.

Anonymous said...

How will National's policies reverse the Maori fication of New Zealand? In the Education sector, Maori words are now REPLACING English words.