The clip hits the internet before he’s out of the shed.
What would happen?
TVNZ would have a field day, and so would every newsroom north of Bluff. The Greens would issue a statement before Luxon had left the car park. Business NZ would discover a sudden interest in diversity. His caucus would start texting each other with names. By dinner he would be "reflecting", and by breakfast he would be reflecting from the back benches. Saying that out loud, on purpose, as a pitch for votes, would end a career.
Well, it did happen. Just not that way round.
Well, it did happen. Just not that way round.
https://x.com/the_salty_one_/status/2107322025484427277/video/1?s=46
In early August — weeks out from election day — Green co-leader Marama Davidson was at the National Iwi Chairs Forum in Queenstown. Chloe Swarbrick was beside her. The room was full of iwi leaders. The interviewer asked why Māori-roll voters should choose Green candidates in the Māori seats.
You might have expected housing. Or water. Or climate. Or anything that sounded like a reason to tick the Green box instead of the box for the Maori Party.
Davidson went another way:
"This is intentional. We know that the future of, not just Aotearoa, but worldwide leadership, is brown and it's wāhine."
Intentional. Worldwide. Brown. Women. As a vote pitch.
The crowd cheered. Chloe dared the room to disagree. There was laughter. Nobody walked it back. The party's own channels posted the session under the title “From Te Tiriti to Thirst Trap Baddies” [internet slang for an attractive, confident person—most often a woman—who posts intentionally alluring, sexy, or glamorous photos and videos on social media to capture attention, compliments, or romantic/sexual interest]. The clip has been doing the rounds again this week, because of course it has.
Swap the colours and the sexes and you have Luxon's men's-shed line — the one that would have ended him before the biscuits. Keep them as Davidson said them and you have a cheer line at a serious political forum, from a co-leader of a party that wants your party vote and seats at the cabinet table.
That is the gag, if you can call it one. The offence is not only the words. It is that the room treated them as wisdom. Race and sex as the job description. Preference sold as progress. Discrimination with a smile, a round of applause, and a dare to say no — which, funnily enough, nobody did.
The Greens are sitting around 14 to 16 percent in the polls. That is not a student flat. That is a party that could decide who gets the keys to the Beehive. And this is what one of its co-leaders offered as the case for the Māori seats: not merit, not ideas, not results — brown and female, on purpose, worldwide.
If Luxon had said the mirror image, the country would have known what to call it. When Davidson says it, and the crowd cheers, we are told it is leadership.
Racism and sexism have not gone away. They have just learned which way to point.
In early August — weeks out from election day — Green co-leader Marama Davidson was at the National Iwi Chairs Forum in Queenstown. Chloe Swarbrick was beside her. The room was full of iwi leaders. The interviewer asked why Māori-roll voters should choose Green candidates in the Māori seats.
You might have expected housing. Or water. Or climate. Or anything that sounded like a reason to tick the Green box instead of the box for the Maori Party.
Davidson went another way:
"This is intentional. We know that the future of, not just Aotearoa, but worldwide leadership, is brown and it's wāhine."
Intentional. Worldwide. Brown. Women. As a vote pitch.
The crowd cheered. Chloe dared the room to disagree. There was laughter. Nobody walked it back. The party's own channels posted the session under the title “From Te Tiriti to Thirst Trap Baddies” [internet slang for an attractive, confident person—most often a woman—who posts intentionally alluring, sexy, or glamorous photos and videos on social media to capture attention, compliments, or romantic/sexual interest]. The clip has been doing the rounds again this week, because of course it has.
Swap the colours and the sexes and you have Luxon's men's-shed line — the one that would have ended him before the biscuits. Keep them as Davidson said them and you have a cheer line at a serious political forum, from a co-leader of a party that wants your party vote and seats at the cabinet table.
That is the gag, if you can call it one. The offence is not only the words. It is that the room treated them as wisdom. Race and sex as the job description. Preference sold as progress. Discrimination with a smile, a round of applause, and a dare to say no — which, funnily enough, nobody did.
The Greens are sitting around 14 to 16 percent in the polls. That is not a student flat. That is a party that could decide who gets the keys to the Beehive. And this is what one of its co-leaders offered as the case for the Māori seats: not merit, not ideas, not results — brown and female, on purpose, worldwide.
If Luxon had said the mirror image, the country would have known what to call it. When Davidson says it, and the crowd cheers, we are told it is leadership.
Racism and sexism have not gone away. They have just learned which way to point.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
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