Imagine if somebody repeatedly accused you of genocide. Would you want them in government with you? Would you be offended at the suggestion? Or would you tacitly concede the high ground to them?
For Chris Hipkins and Labour, this isn’t a thought experiment.
The pattern was established in October 2021, when Te Pāti Māori first crossed what should be a serious line. As COVID-19 cases rose among Māori communities, co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer didn’t just criticise the government’s pandemic response. She accused it of genocide.
“If the government is prepared to open the borders as soon as our country is 90% vaccinated, they are willingly holding Māori up to be the sacrificial lambs,” the Guardian reports her saying. “It is a modern form [of] genocide.”
You would have to be pretty desperate for power to consider going into government with a party that accused you of genocide. A self respecting party would say we won’t deal with a party that deals in extremism, division and such inflammatory language.
“If the government is prepared to open the borders as soon as our country is 90% vaccinated, they are willingly holding Māori up to be the sacrificial lambs,” the Guardian reports her saying. “It is a modern form [of] genocide.”
You would have to be pretty desperate for power to consider going into government with a party that accused you of genocide. A self respecting party would say we won’t deal with a party that deals in extremism, division and such inflammatory language.
When Te Pāti Māori made genocide accusations, there was no media firestorm demanding accountability. No sustained questioning about whether such language was appropriate. No editorial demands for more measured discourse. No demanding interviews or editorial pushback.
The accusations were tacitly framed as legitimate expressions of concern.
When ACT leader David Seymour merely met with representatives of the 2022 anti-mandate protest at Parliament he was pilloried. Despite carefully qualifying his engagement and rejecting the protest’s more odious elements, Seymour was branded “irresponsible” by then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. National’s Christopher Luxon also felt the need to distance himself from Seymour.
But when Te Pāti Māori hurled literal genocide accusations at the Government, there were no hand-wringing editorials.
The double standard at work.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
No comments:
Post a Comment