Derek Mackie: Is the tide turning?

Well, well! A leading newspaper, the NZ Herald, has published, in full, David Seymour’s response to the predictable woke furore that erupted all over the mainstream media outlets and on social media after he criticised the issuing of Priority Access Codes for Maori to get the Covid vaccine. 

As he points out, the codes themselves were already widely shared on social media, and yet only he was singled out for the social justice backlash. I wonder if that’s because he is the leader of the only political party in NZ to regularly and consistently take the government to task over its blatant racial preferment. 

His article is a scathing indictment on the government’s separatist policy, described fully in the He Puapua report, to divide NZ by race, creating two classes of citizens - Maori and the vast majority. The first class, in every sense of the word, gets more power, rights, justice, wealth, land, water and, ultimately, a veto over every decision the vast majority tries to make. Everyone else has to bite their tongue and say thank you. 

Tony Sayers: Be Careful Where You Stick Your Moko

I have just read about the Maori outrage over the usage of a cartoon figure decorated with a moko (tattoo) for advertising a Covid-19 vaccination programme, that was commissioned by a Te Tiriti Joint Governance Group, comprised of the Bay of Plenty District Health Board and Te Rūnanga Hauora Māori o te Moana a Toi. {1], [5].
The depiction of a virus decorated with tā moko has offended a considerable number of Maori.
Labour List MP, Tamati Coffey has dubbed this illustration as being racist [2].

In New Zealand, (Oops, Aotearoa), the bulk of accusations made in the news media about incidents of racism appear to be of Maori accusing Pakehas of racism. To date, where there have been incidents of racism by Maori towards pakeha, they just do not receive any publicity, consequently the public become conditioned to the idea that only Pakeha can be racist.