Ani O'Brien: "Load of crap" - how radical Māori activism is beyond reproach

The way media and the chattering classes are carrying on you would think Minister Chris Bishop had suggested Stan Walker was “bound to get slapped up” and declared the way to resolve their political differences would be through a boxing match. Instead, the fervent supporter of New Zealand music voiced an opinion at the Aotearoa Music Awards that upset the sensibilities of the painfully self-righteous moneyed cultural elite.

He called Stan Walker’s performance at the AMAs a “load of crap” and this has quickly been deemed to be a highly racist attack by the perpetually furious well-to-dos tweeting from their converted villas in Grey Lynn and Kelburn. That the minister might have been expressing dislike for the quality of the performance was not considered. He was slapped with an R for ‘racist’ and paraded around the town square.

Bishop was, in fact, referring to neither the fact that Walker’s song was a cultural Māori performance nor the quality of his music. He was expressing exasperation that Te Pāti Māori activism was being centred at our national music awards night. Like many New Zealanders, the Leader of the House has clearly reached peak fatigue when it comes to the radical activism of the smallest political party in Parliament. He objected to having to sit through a performance that celebrated an ideology that detests our democracy and thinks non-Māori New Zealanders should be grateful that we “get to live here at all”.1

Toitū Te Tiriti flags flew on the stage as Stan Walker and his back up dancers performed waiata and haka. As others, like
Matua Kahurangi, have pointed out, these flags retail for $55 on the Toitū Te Tiriti website.


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This wouldn’t be an issue if not for the fact that Toitū Te Tiriti Limited is owned by Christine Tamihere, the wife of Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi and daughter of Te Pāti Māori President John Tamihere. She is better known as Kiri Tamihere-Waititi. It is unclear if she is currently working for the party, but she has previously been a staffer.

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Someone else who until recently was a Te Pāti Māori staff member is the face of Toitū Te Tiriti Eru Kapa-Kingi. He is also the son of Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. In fact, it appears he was a paid parliamentary staffer when he was leading the protests against the Government. Though Te Pāti Māori say he was on leave at the time.

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Not only is Toitū Te Tiriti clearly a Te Pāti Māori organisation, the sale of its merchandise is going into the pockets of the party too. So when Stan Walker flied the flag in his performance, he was not simply making a statement about his political beliefs, he was demonstrating allegiance to Te Pāti Māori.

Can we imagine for a moment if a musician had waved an ACT flag and made their performance an ode to David Seymour’s policies and politics? I suspect the people condemning National’s Chris Bishop would be calling any musician celebrating a Government party much worse than a “load of crap”. They would likely lionise any Labour MP who criticised it.

Now it is hardly a secret that New Zealand’s music scene is so deeply and performatively woke that they would publicly castigate their own mother if she questioned radical Te Pāti Māori narratives. Self-flagellation by non-Māori musicians is a requirement in order to enjoy a modicum of success in the music industry. I am not talking about reasonable support and advocacy for Māori, I mean public messages of cloying sycophancy to a party that spends more time whinging about the rules of Parliament than they do actually turning up to partake in our democracy.

If a musician in New Zealand ever did harbour the outrageous perspective that our elected Government are not a bunch of genocidal fascists, they would certainly not voice it. To do so would be career suicide. They would not dare speak the thought that it is a “load of crap” that the Māori never ceded sovereignty. Nor that they loathe the idea that honouring the Treaty of Waitangi requires what the New Zealand Herald’s Thomas Coughlan recently got bold enough to call “separatist-ish policies”.2

The music industry is a dominated by its elites’ competitive drive to out-do each other in a game of who can display support for the hardest leftist positions. The media, who regularly engage similar games and can scarcely bring themselves to criticise the many dodgy dealings of Te Pāti Māori, cheerlead the partisan politics of music in New Zealand.

When Chris Bishop’s remarks, and his verbal spat with practically geriatric (and yet no less woke) musician Don McGlashan, reached the inboxes of our country’s journalists they began to froth at the mouth.

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Unlike the reluctance they demonstrated to report on the morally dodgy behaviour of Green MP Benjamin “Bussy” Doyle, they hurried to print stories about the righteous dressing down the music industry was giving the minister. Unlike the uncritical reporting of Toitū Te Tiriti’s Eru Kapa-Kingi threatening to “slap up” the now-Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour, no benefit of the doubt was afforded to Bishop and his remarks.

The ridiculously over the top public statements from Fur Patrol and the Aotearoa Music Awards themselves, received amplification from the media. Fur Patrol was apologetic and denounced Bishop as he was wearing one of the band’s t-shirts at the time.

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Having disbanded many years ago, it was likely the first time the band trended on X. Much to their delight I am sure. As someone on X remarked, “just shut up and play Lydia.”

It must have been saddening for Chris Bishop to see this over-the-top response to comments he has clarified were about the “overtly political branding on display”. No minister has ever demonstrated more support for New Zealand music than him. He may be politically alienated from the scene, but he has never let that get in the way of his loyalty to the music he loves. He knows that these musicians don’t vote for him and are explicitly critical of his politics, but that has never mattered.

To Chris Bishop’s credit, he has not submitted to the pressure of the cancel mob. Speedy retractions and gushing apologies are expected and demanded by the media when someone gets ‘called out’ for not being sufficiently hard left. They seem baffled that Bishop neither retracted nor apologised. He simply stated that perhaps he should have kept his opinions to himself. He does not deny that he thinks the political branding exercise was a “load of crap” and that will resonate with a lot of New Zealanders.

New Zealand has activism fatigue. Most New Zealanders, I suspect, are quite sick of the constant barrage of Te Pāti Māori’s brand of Māori activism. The people behind Toitū Te Tiriti live in mansions and famously showed-off on Instagram as they indulged in extravagance in Paris. Toitū Te Tirit’s message is one of struggle and unfairness and for the many New Zealanders of all races who are genuinely struggling, this is quite ironic.

The Government won a mandate at the last election to remove racial separatism from our public services - not that they have managed this in practice. There was a clear demand for the Government to undo the radical actions of the previous Government which had embedded race-based policy in our laws. Kiwis do not support a separate Māori Parliament. We did not support a health system divided by race. Most of us wish for a future in which New Zealand is not obsessed with race and instead each of us is valued, in the words of Martin Luther King Junior, for the content of our character not the colour of our skin.

The media and the chattering classes can punish Chris Bishop all they like, but his remarks will likely land very well with the voting public. Coming to his defence, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour remarked:

“I suspect that there’ll be people who think that Bishop was absolutely right, people who think he was wrong, people who don’t care. We shouldn’t be so concerned about people expressing a view.”

And that is what it was; a view. Perhaps one that should have been expressed elsewhere if the minister didn’t want to attract the rage of musicians so famous I had to Google them to find out who they are. But nonetheless, there is no requirement that every New Zealander must laud every performance by Māori. Music and art are subjective. Furthermore, it is troubling that the fundraising organisation Toitū Te Tiriti with its obvious roots in Te Pāti Māori is somehow considered beyond reproach. What a load of crap.

References:
1 Mariameno Kapa-Kingi recently said this in Parliament.
2 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/te-pati-maori-tries-to-heal-rift-with-labour-is-it-too-late-thomas-coughlan/65DOBNTGXFBMTDDI2UIHF7BYHA/

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.