The protests took place across the North Island this morning and they were big, impressively so.
There were an estimated 300 cars at the Auckland protest, there were about 50 on the Southern Motorway- which created a 3km backlog- and there were over 100 people at each of the Hamilton, Whakatane, Rotorua, Tokoroa, Taupo and Palmerston North gatherings.
That is impressive, those numbers. Because from what I can see, those people were activated by the Māori Party in about 24 hours.
If I'm not mistaken, they put up their social media posts yesterday, it got into the news yesterday- and all of those hundreds of people turned up to protest today at 7am.
Regardless of whether you agree with the Māori Party and what they advocate for or not, it is pretty impressive that they managed to get that many people together in such a short space of time.
That tells you two things, I reckon.
One is that there's a lot of emotion out there about what the Government is planning to do in the race relations area. Those protests, when you think about it, were actually about nothing- but also about everything.
There wasn't just one thing that those people got out to protest about. Nothing has actually happened. If you listen to the number of things people were protesting over, it was a smorgasbord of reasons why they were out there.
The promise of the Government doing anything in the race relations area got those people emotional enough to go out.
Secondly, if the Māori Party can activate that many people when nothing has happened in only 24 hours, imagine what they can do when something actually does happen.
For example, when ACT's Treaty principles bill goes to Parliament. That bill has the potential to trigger a referendum- if it actually gets passed through Parliament.
There's no evidence that suggests this will happen, but imagine how big the protests could be based on what we saw today.
I know that not everybody takes the Māori Party seriously, because they're all about the spectacle. A lot of the stunts that they pull are clearly meaningless and make themselves look foolish to a lot of people.
But do not underestimate them. Because they are dominating the conversation on the first day of Parliament.
We aren't talking about the new Government sitting in Parliament for the first time, we're talking about the Māori Party today.
And I suspect this will be the first of many days where they will dominate over the next three years.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
6 comments:
I am sure the coordination would have started before the announcement. The media were happy to pitch in with a lot of publicity about the event and meeting places. The wider left wing activist networks would also be happy to pitch in at short notice.
I don’t see repealing Māori only initiatives or rejecting He Puapua as anti Māori, simply a rejection of the need for 2 systems in order to achieve equality for all within our democratic society. It is time those Māori radicals got rid of the chip on their shoulders and stopped blaming others for their own inadequacies.
It's not like these protesters had anything else to do , like work or look after their families.
Yet another DPA statement of the obvious. Many maori have time on their hands.They enjoy communal get togethers. The once were warriors genes are strong. They worship violence (haka). Near all are not critical thinkers. They are accessed by a mass of propoganda.They have community rebel propoganda centres (marae). Many protest for the hell of it. Remember the rampaging maori in 1981. Now they want aparthied.
My hope is that as maori warm to their revolution masses of ordianry citizens will turn out to counter. if the mad rightist thugs (many I suspect leftist actor placements) can be suppressed huge turnouts of ordinary citizens would effectively damp maori protest. The election results show the degree of counter maori sentimentis. (The election was not lost on cost of living) Lets hope some groups will find time in their productive non maori lives to organise.
I am in akl drove to work during rush hour, and never saw a single protester except one single car driving down queen street, waving maori flags out the window and everyone on the footpath was ignoring them. Hardly a revolution. Nz herald and the msm blew everything out of proportion. On 1 news the whole thing was how wonderful te pati are and how racist the new govt are. The main stream mafia are not fooling anyone.
The HDA view is not wrong. All along - the plan has been to achieve Maori domination by 2040 ( i.e. He Puapua). Any type of disruption and damage is justified.
The final goal of Maori control supersedes all other areas - no consideration or planning for other areas of society or the economy. All these can fail - health, education, infrastructure, energy etc - as long as the main goal is achieved.
This has a fatal flaw - i.e. that merely shifting wealth from one group to another will keep the economy ( and benefits) going and that the 83% will continue to pay forever.
Of course, NZ will become a Third World country - very fast. Maori will preside over a failed state. (Possibly to be bailed out by China.)
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