And they seem to be largely taking in the spirit it’s intended, which is just a bit of humour. And it also means Luxon’s play worked.
Which is - by having a crack at the Aussies to distract us from the actual issue, which is Paul Goldsmith taking Māori words out of the Matariki invitation.
Look, let’s get to the heart of this, this was a dumb thing for Paul Goldsmith to do.
Yeah, I get he might want an invitation from him to be authentic to him and if he doesn’t make a habit of going around using Māori words in a tokenistic fashion to show off his inclusivity credentials, then sure, he might want to take out the Te Reo and replace it with English - fair enough.
But Paul Goldsmith is going have start being a little bit smarter and strategic about this, because this Government doesn’t need a petty issue like this on race relations to deal with. It has got enough going on as it is.
A lot of what the Government's doing on race relations is worthy and does need to be done.
Repealing the Māori wards, tidying up the Treaty Principles, halting co-governance, putting an end to certain ethnicities getting priority surgery - and they can defend that stuff quite easily on democratic and equal rights grounds.
But when Paul Goldsmith does something like taking Māori words out of an invitation - although it may be true to his way of speaking - what he does is he makes this democratic and equal rights reset just look like an anti Māori thing for some people.
Now to be fair to him, he’s not the only minister who’s been caught fighting petty battles like this, he's just the latest.
But it would pay for these guys the next time they want to take Māori words out of a document to really think about whether that, if leaked, is something they want to add to the Government's race relations agenda.
Because there is a very fine line between appearing to be for equal rights and appearing to be just anti-everything Māori.
And frankly, there are much more important things going on in this country right now. An energy crisis, a possible recession, a massive problem in health - just to name a few.
But what are we going to remember about this week? Paul Goldsmith’s invitation.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
10 comments:
The great majority of citizens, like me, do not have the IQ and natural language facility or interest of HdPA. To us te reo is a whole new and superfluous layer to be labouriously added to the myriad other complex skills necessary in the modern world (unless part of some pro maori sinecure). We loathe the imposition and confusion of this now largely contrived stone age language. All just for maori mana. Tossing te reo at Ockers is an insult. Goldsmith was bold and rational. May his logic extend promptly to local te reo twaddle and reach far beyond his Ministry..
HDPA, your 'petty race issues' (PRI), unless strongly addressed, will be snowballing and here long after 'energy crisis, recession, health' issues have been corrected - so I believe the PRIs are the biggest issue on the table, in fact if all the funding that has been channeled into your PRIs over the years was distributed to the other issues then the position would not be so bad.
I have mixed feelings about the author’s line of argument here.
On the one hand, the recipient of the invitation is unlikely to understand te reo, and presumably the letter writer doesn’t typically write in te reo either, so it seems a bit like virtue signalling to include te reo.
On the other hand, the invitation is to Matariki, a public holiday underpinned by pagan Māori ritual, including as it does the worship of the stars in te reo and the “feeding” of those stars with food cooked in an earth oven. So it does seem coy to omit te reo when you are inviting dignitaries from overseas to witness how New Zealand has (rather surreptitiously) adopted paganism and idolatry in its state ceremonies.
LFC
The petty bit is the likes of TVNZ News making a big story of this because their political reporters are political activists rather than journalists.
What was your point HDPA? . Just stirring division?? I delete or ignore everything that comes to me with tokenism maori included as just rubbish mail.
The real question is why this was even an issue in the first place given most people can’t and don’t want to speak a language that has no relevance to us. It is ludicrous that anyone would think it appropriate for a Minister of the Crown to address their Australian equivalent in a language that is not our national one, let alone use an unofficial name. We are called New Zealand. No add ons, just New Zealand. We are also an English speaking country - THAT is the language that unites our multiculturalism, not Maori.
A “possible recession”? Must be nice to live in HDPA’s bubble - businesses across all industries are collapsing, cost of living is through the roof with a W of a RBNZ governor who is more interested in ideology than common sense, with no respite on the horizon anytime soon. It’s not like rates and insurances etc will drop is it?
As for the Goldsmith issue - he is absolutely right to cut such tokenism out. It has become prolific & frankly, highly irritating & offensive - whether Air NZ to government departments & ordinary & essential businesses, including dentists doctors, banks & telcos. It would appear there has been a huge push to try & make English the secondary language. This is unacceptable.
"Because there is a very fine line between appearing to be for equal rights and appearing to be just anti-everything Māori."
Why is there a common presupposition that the best we can hope for is equality? What exactly is wrong with being "anti-everything Maori"? This isn't to be anti-Maori as a group of people or as individuals within that group, but I can't see the problem with opposing "'everything Maori" being forced down the throats of the majority of people who are not Maori.
ERobert - I agree 100%. You have said it for me. !!
Perhaps the te reo was eliminated from the invitation, so it became clear that a welcome "hongi" was no longer mandatory for Australians , unlike the one pakeha Ardern inflicted on the pakeha Scott Morrison
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