NZCPR: Building Success

What makes a country great?

It’s a timely question to ask, because over the last few weeks, with ferries running aground, air force planes breaking down, and electricity pylons falling over, we’ve all had cause to question whether New Zealand can still be regarded as a highly developed western nation, or whether we have become a struggling backwater.

The truth is that first world status must be earned. Regrettably over recent times we’ve taken our eye off the ball and fallen badly behind. We can no longer say, hand on heart, that we are a world leader in education, healthcare, infrastructure, or any of those other foundations of a civilised society.

Barrie Davis: There Will Always be an England

So sang Vera Lynn and millions died making it happen. Today, however, it seems unlikely. Whereas the few who flew the Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down young German men in small planes over the channel, today the British watch young Muslim men packed in small boats land unchallenged on England’s beaches. 

What lesson, if any, is there in this for New Zealand?

Barrie Davis: I Lift My Pen…

The proposed Treaty Principles Bill by the ACT Party has caused debate about the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi in Maori. Dame Anne Salmond recently published an article in which she claimed that Maoris have a different way of thinking to Pakehas and so attribute a different meaning to the Treaty. I will consider that claim and its implications.

Dame Anne takes her ways of thinking from Cartesian dualism, which she says is brought about by the division between the thinking self and the material world. She says this gives rise to logic based on binary oppositions which organizes reality into entities that are radically distinct from each other. She also says that is the origin of scientific racism.

Peter Hemmingson: Thoughts on the Treaty Grudge Industry

The ethnocentric polarisation of New Zealanders finds its entry point in the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974.

Before the Act was passed, the legal definition of ‘Maori” was by blood quantum: “A person of the Maori race of New Zealand or a half-caste descendant thereof.”

After panicked complaints from its Maori MPs that soon nobody would be able to prove eligibility for the Maori Electoral Roll, Labour changed that definition tor read: “A person of the Maori race of New Zealand or any descendant thereof.”

With the stroke of a pen, anyone with a fraction of Maori blood, such as the 1/16th Maori, Stephen [aka ‘Tipene’] O’Regan, could hang a big mutton bone around his neck and identify himself as ‘Maori.’

David Lillis: Another Comment on the Media, Education and Co-Governance

Another Characteristic Media Piece

Recently I was motivated to write a piece on the media and co-governance (Lillis, 2022). I expressed the opinion that New Zealand is on a dangerous path that advantages a small minority on the basis of genetics or self-reported ethnicity. I expressed the view that our media presents co-governance almost exclusively as the desirable pathway to our future, and seldom publishes alternative opinions.

 

I discussed an article from a former mayor of Kapiti Coast (Gurunathan, 2022a) and stated my perspective that it was well-meaning and positive in intent. I did note that he appeared to cast disagreement with co-governance as bias, or even racism, and to discount the possibility that dissenters articulate genuinely-held views, also advanced with positive intent.

Since then, the same author has published another piece in Stuff (Gurunathan, 2022b). I believe that this piece is well-intended, as was his previous, and we can understand his position. Nevertheless, it is notable that he presents a particular line that seems to cast any individual or body standing up to a minority as committing wrong and possibly engaging in racism. The title is already provocative: Councils should think twice before insulting their Treaty partners.

David Alexander Lillis: Systemic Racism and Bias in New Zealand?

Claims of Structural Racism and Bias

In recent years we have heard repeated claims that the New Zealand Health System is systemically racist and that Māori health outcomes are compromised as a result. For example, Came et al (2021) argue that constitutional transformation and decolonization are potentially powerful ethical sources of disruption to whiteness and structural racism.

Evidence for such claims includes the fact that Māori live on average approximately seven years fewer than other New Zealanders (Ministry of Social Development, 2022). Knight (2022) discusses another assertion - that Māori experience poorer health services than non-Māori and that decolonising the health system will improve Māori health and longevity. Partly in response to such claims, the Māori Health Authority was established in 2021, ostensibly to work with the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand in ensuring that the health system works well for Māori.

Clive Bibby: A wise observation from an unexpected quarter

I have been a Bob Jones fan ever since he decided to put his money where his mouth is and try to legitimately influence political change in this country. 

I don’t always agree with him but, as much as anything, l have enjoyed his fearless comments, often directed at pompous bureaucrats or politicians who hide behind the protection of their office while imposing their idea of equal opportunity on the rest of us. 

The fact that their idea of “equal” is more accurately described as “selected” is unfortunately lost on most political observers is a tragedy in itself.

Henry Armstrong: Is New Zealand Really Racist? Definitely!

Internationally known film director Taika Waititi caused a minor storm on the international circuit when, in a recent BBC interview, he claimed” New Zealand is a racist country”. Prominent Maori activist John Tamihere claimed during the 2020 election campaign, that “all Pakeha are asymptomatic racists”. 

National Opposition leader Judith Collins, in attempting to get the Ardern government to “come clean” in divulging the He Puapua Report on constitutional changes to Parliament, was roundly condemned for her “racist” attempts to create division in New Zealand - you know, that “team of five million’ who are “all in this (waka?) together”. 

The flamboyant co-leader of Te Paati Maori, in his Stetson hat, was so incensed at Collins’s blatant attempt to expose the traumatic contents of He Puapua to Parliament, he performed a haka in protest and was (rightly) kicked out of the House.

Professor Margaret Mutu of Auckland University, long noted for her unrelenting racist rhetoric, promotes the terms “white supremacy” and “white privilege” as being normalised in New Zealand (Ref: Newshub, 3 June 2021). She claims “white supremacy” is synonymous with racism, which she claims is an everyday experience of our Maori peoples.

Tony Sayers: Through Pakeha Eyes

To date, the media has swamped us with articles about the countless demands and accusations from the Maori Sovereignty Movement. The non-Maori component of the population have tended to remain silent through fear of being branded racist. Even those who call for equality have been branded as racist by the Maori trolls because equality and their agenda are incompatible. They subdue their critics by calling them ‘Racist’.

Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer pulled this stunt in Parliament last week in an attempt to intimidate opponents to the He Puapua strategy, and to try and stifle debate on the issue.

They enjoy the publicity and like to portray the image of being the victims.

My stance is for true equality for all people, regardless of race, colour or creed.

So, go ahead and call me racist, the Maori activists are the only ones who believe it.

There are truths that need to be spoken – and I will speak them.

Jeff Fynn-Paul: Is it Racist to Disagree with a Person of Colour?

 

1. White Fragility?

According to social media, the current zeitgeist, and the author of the runaway bestseller White Fragility, it absolutely is.[1]  If you are “white,” and you disagree on any political issue with any person of colour, this is a sure sign that you are a “racist.” 

Ok, then.  Let’s take that same logic and apply it to other common situations:  

Is it sexist for a man to disagree with a woman?  Is it sexist every time a husband disagrees with his wife? 

Karl du Fresne: Stuff's racist history

Most readers of this blog will be aware of Stuff's front-page apology to Maori on Monday for supposedly racist reporting dating back generations, and of the series of subsequent articles setting out the many ways in which the newspaper titles now owned by Stuff have supposedly perpetuated negative racist stereotypes.

This was my response in a letter published in The Dominion Post this morning:

Bob Edlin: Maori Party reports a pandemic of racism

Our daily check with the Beehive website draw a blank.  Nothing has been announced there since the PM announced the offender responsible for the Christchurch terror attack on 15 March 2019 has been designated as a terrorist entity.

But elsewhere in our monitoring of the political scene we found the Māori Party is hot and bothered about goings-on in the education domain .  The item was headlined Racism In Education, Second Pandemic In Aotearoa

The Māori Party candidate for Te Tai Tonga, Tākuta Ferris, and Waiariki candidate, Rawiri Waititi, said in the statement they “believe institutional racism within the education system is holding this nation back”.

Theodore Dalrymple: Much Ado About Nothing - pledging allegiance to identity politics.

The killing of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis launched a new global epidemic, one not deadly like Covid-19 but perhaps as infectious—that of insincere breast-beating that, oddly enough, has given new credence to the term institutional racism. 

One of the institutions busy institutionalizing racism is the Folger Library in Washington, D.C.