Barrie Davis: Children of the Miffed

First published in 1925, Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist by Elsdon Best on Maori lore has just been republished.

The jacket cover tells us that Best was born at Porirua in 1856, worked on a sheep station in Poverty Bay and lived with the Tuhoe people in the Ureweras. “Nine years before his death in 1931, Sir Apirana Ngata said of him, ‘There is not a member of the Maori race who is fit to wipe the boots of Elsdon Best in the matter of knowledge of the lore of the race to which we belong’.”

Toby Young: Why the Right Must Take the High Ground When it Comes to Free Speech

This is the text of the annual oration I gave at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, September 24th.

I’d like to thank the Robert Menzies Institute for inviting me to speak to you tonight and for giving my wife and me an opportunity to spend a few days in this wonderful city – and thanks to Angie Scanlon for letting us stay in her house.

Several British people we’ve bumped into have said Australia is like a version of England in which everything works, and that’s particularly true of Melbourne. Many of our cities look a bit like Melbourne might after a nuclear apocalypse. In fact, if anyone knows George Miller, tell him he could save a lot of money by setting the next Mad Max movie in Middlesbrough. He won’t have to spend a penny on set design.

Barrie Davis: Matauranga Maori is a Myth

The New Zealand Parliament is now receiving advice which is informed by maturanga Maori, New Zealand universities are offering courses on maturanga Maori, and New Zealand corporations are incorporating maturanga Maori in their business practices. What is maturanga Maori and why have our institutions accepted it so readily?

Professor Sir Sidney (Hirini) Moko Mead, a foundation professor of Maori studies at Victoria University and a prolific author, has this year published Matauranga Maori, a book about Maori knowledge. It is a companion volume to his 2003 book Tikanga Maori on Maori practices and values. I will consult his Matauranga Maori to consider the above question.

John Robertson: You’re Not a Racist — You’re Just Done With Religion Disguised as Culture

Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2)

New Zealand was meant to be a secular democracy. Instead, we’ve got a government pushing a bill that wraps spiritual beliefs in “culture” and slips them into our schools.

This isn’t about honouring heritage — it’s about normalising prayers to gods in taxpayer-funded classrooms, without ever calling it religion. Because religion gets criticised — but culture? Culture is sacred. Mandatory. Untouchable.

Karl du Fresne: Wellington Airport's rebranding exercise - And the point is?

I’m not a shareholder in Wellington Airport but if I was, I’d be getting up on my hind legs at the next annual meeting to object to an extravagant promotional charade that demonstrates how completely the corporate sector has been captured (or should I say conned?) by the twin forces of marketing hucksterism and feel-good wokery.The online platform Stop Press, which uncritically chronicles all the absurdities perpetrated by the bullshit artists of the PR and advertising industries, reports that the airport company is undertaking a rebranding exercise in which it will become “WLG – a portal to the future”.

Parmjeet Parmar: Uni’s compulsory Treaty courses damage learning experience

From next year, the University of Auckland will require all first-year students to complete a ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ course covering the Treaty of Waitangi and traditional Māori knowledge systems.

ACT has a number of concerns about this plan. Firstly, students’ time is precious.

We fund universities to prepare students for their careers, and that requires time spent specialising on subjects relevant to their chosen majors.

Martin Hanson: Does New Zealand need a new Scopes trial?

In July 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher, was put on trial, accused of violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in state-funded high schools and universities. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 ($1500 in today’s money), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

The trial was deliberately engineered in order to bring attention to the theocratic approach to truth, freedom of speech and rationality in the Deep South at that time.

The trial received national and international attention, and was given the colourful title of “The Monkey Trial” of “the infidel Scopes” by journalist H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun.

Lindsay Mitchell: New Zealand - No longer a secular state

An ODT opinion piece recently parodied the rapid adoption of Māori names for government departments. It drew attention to the renaming of the Earthquake Commission as Toka Tū Ake EQC which apparently "reflects the whakapapa of our nation." The name-change decision was made by the Minister and cabinet.

The Commission site contains a section about their new Māori name.