Heather du Plessis-Allan: Kids shouldn't be exempt from citizen's arrests

If you listen to parenting experts, you'll hear the same thing time and time again about raising kids properly. 

They need love, but just as importantly, they need boundaries. 

They need to be told no, they need to be disciplined, and they need to learn what they can and can't do. 

Karl du Fresne: On virtue signalling, Kiri Allan, Three Waters and secret donations

Newly promoted minister Kiritapu Allan has said what a lot of people think but feel unable to say.

She lashed out in a tweet against “tokenistic” use of te reo by employees of DOC “as an attempt to show govt depts are culturally competent”. She told Stuff she encouraged the use of the Maori language, but wanted it used “with integrity”.

“You want to use te reo, you use it with integrity and use it responsibly,” Stuff quoted Allan as saying. “This isn’t a ‘everybody go out and use mahi and kaupapa’ and say you have a deep and enduring relationship with te ao Māori.”

Of course this shouldn’t apply only to DOC, where Allan was in charge before this week’s cabinet reshuffle resulted in her elevation to the justice portfolio. The same message could be directed at all government agencies where middle-class Pakeha public servants, eager to demonstrate their solidarity with the tangata whenua, indulge in an ostentatious display of virtue-signalling by using token Maori words and phrases. I wonder whether Radio New Zealand also got the memo.