Why National’s race baiting won’t create another Don Brash Orewa Moment

By
Martyn Bradbury
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32
1835

The desperation of Judith to try and spark a political race war by calling the Māori Health Authority ‘segregation’ is an embarrassing way for her to end her leadership.

She is actually better than this and we should attempt to remember her as such.

There is a story for National to tell and proudly to take to the electorate, but this sad sorry race baiting ain’t it!

It’s not just the morality of blowing such an ugly dog whistle, it’s that the tactic won’t work!

NZ is different now than when Don Brash vomited his Orewa Speech up.

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We sing the National Anthem in both languages now.

Pakeha have a greater awareness of the injustice of our past.

Our children sing Māori songs in school.

The idea of Māori who have been failed by the system gaining their own agency sounds like a solution, not Māori privilege.

But most importantly, all the old boomer pakeha who get emotionally triggered when they hear Te Reo on the TV or Radio are dying out.

There will be no great reactionary tsunami of ‘one law for all’ petty bigotry masquerading as principle that will sweep aside Jacinda in 2023 because that election represents the first time in NZ political history when Gen X and Millennials are numerically larger than Boomers, and this next Generation don’t see Māori sovereignty as anything to be fearful of.

Judith pulled this stunt to stop haemorrhaging votes to ACT.

ACT have become the defacto Right Wing Values Party and their rise isn’t a fluke, it’s a true realignment on the Right, but this race baiting crap by National isn’t where ACT are making inroads, they are gaining traction from authentic Right Wing value issues like freedom of speech, gun rights and culture wars.

I think this is disastrous from Judith and a total misread of the electorate. The reactionary vote that Don Brash surfed with his Orewa Speech coalesces around Woke micro aggression policing and culture war hot buttons now, not Māori gaining their own Health Authority.

There just aren’t enough people frightened by Māori anymore for these tired tactics to work.

 

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32 COMMENTS

    • If the MP from Mexico has his way, it looks as if workers/persons in New Zealand on non-valid visas, will be granted residency. Many of these are in fact Asian, and an unknown number are exploited Asians.

  2. I have never understood the call for targeted campaigns to stop Maori smoking or eating the wrong food. All the Maori I know speak and understand English and are not unable to read so why cannot they understand the messages put out for the general public
    . One area I feel Maori have been let down is by those that call themselves leaders as many are very overweight and not a good example to follow and others like Winston smoked

    • Gee trev as usual you are talking a whole lot of verbal diarrhea. We ain’t the only ones that smoke, drink and are over weight. And we ain’t the ones that have been in charge of this country in local and central government either we are a minority so don’t blame us for the fucken mess our country is in.

      • +1 covid is pa

        The reality is NZ, for better or worse, has a founding document that is about a bi-cultural relationship and division of assets and ownership in NZ. This has not been honoured in many ways, but in particular under neoliberalism it is not honoured by selling off or giving away natural assets to foreign powers and individuals who control them, while allowing a third wave of immigration that is greater than the existing Maori population and thus creating new voter power base, and power and poverty transfers, massive demand on social welfare like health and superannuation, in a completely different direction from the treaty aims.

        The fact that disease and addiction has been used in history to dis empower and destroy populations (small pox/American Indians, opium wars/UK, Meth/opium/covid/China) is a valuable lesson in the legacy of such tactics.

        So to just blame the people involved without examining the sources of the danger, the legality of spreading harmful products and disease, and lack of effectiveness in stopping the above, to enable other power groups to benefit instead. (AKA opening border and MIQ to people who have Covid to work and increasing the community spread risks, as foreign Fishers, foreign sportspeople or foreigners studying/working in NZ, or those here and abroad want to go on internationals holidays to the risks of local people). (Running down our health system, allowing spread of diabetes, smoking, alcohol, tobacco

        Many of the harmful products are coming into NZ illegally with little regard to the vulnerable groups who take it up and seem to get off or with little penalty by the NZ legal system as money can be made from social deprivation (aka social bonds).

        https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/115014183/cigarette-smuggling-case-defendants-keep-names-secret-to-protect-children-employees
        https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/abandoned-boat-leads-police-to-record-448m-haul-of-methamphetamine/77RJ7RVTXHSNEAVZ6IRF524GYA/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11842563 https://www.tvnz.co.nz/content/tvnz/onenews/story/2019/03/07/hold-filipino-shipping-agent-escapes-jail-time-after-225k-un-tax.html ).

        Where are the massive amounts of drugs/contraband coming from that have been streaming into NZ for 15 years and now being bought into NZ in massive quantities and dropped around our coasts?

        Cartels are scrambling’: Virus snarls global drug tradehttps://apnews.com/article/global-trade-tx-state-wire-china-ny-state-wire-virus-outbreak-4f0a4ca93cc2fee94d386efb13db31a0

        Yuancheng Group, also known as Wuhan Yuancheng Technology Development Co., Ltd., is a Chinese chemical manufacturing company headquartered in Wuhan, China. The company is a notable supplier of precursors for the manufacturing of illicit drugs, such as Methamphetamine and Fentanyl. Yuancheng has approximately 700 employees and 30 locations across China.[1] Yuancheng is designated as a New and High Technology Enterprise and therefore receives additional incentives from the Chinese government.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuancheng_Group

        Obviously no interest in the Uyghur pllight by the woke and government as well as the above when you want to continue to make individuals millionaires more money and get easy political donations.

    • Your comment is a bit more direct than I would be but when lifestyle diseases are a major problem expecting that changing the health provider will fix that problem is very unlikely to help unless they have a better way of encouraging lifestyle change. I am inclined to think that poverty & education (in a broad sense, not just academic achievement) are better indicators of health status than race is.

      • Bonnie – I’m inclined to agree with you here. My generation trotted off to weekly cooking and nutrition classes at the local normal school, and we learnt a lot of basic healthy living stuff as youngsters. I think that all that got tossed out by those politically correct pen pushers in the Dept of Education. I also did Nutrition as one paper in my School Certificate General Science option.

        I don’t know how anyone is meant to know anything that they haven’t been taught, possibly more so Pacific Islanders swamped with all that disgustingly fatty tinned meat sent over to them from New Zealand, and a much greater health hazard than freshly caught fish will ever be.

        Poverty, of course, dictates buying the cheapest food options, and takeaways are a norm for many, who often know little about food or cooking – or are too busy working multi or overlapping family shifts, to prepare food.

        The Quit Line acknowledges stress as the main trigger for smoking tobacco, but again and again, instead of addressing the triggers and the stressors, smokers get walloped with higher and higher costs, exacerbating both the causes and effects. It’s a vicious circle.

  3. Collins was asked a question and answered it. You’re blowing this way out of proportion yet again. Just like yesterday when you had a picture of the KKK above a similar article. Get a bloody grip!

  5. Hope you are right Martin, but I was taught Maori and sang the national anthem in Maori in my primary school 40 years ago. The kids were very positive about it and loved the Maori teacher in the primers, but from about the age of 9 or 10 I was shocked at the racist attitudes they had picked up, presumably from their parents. Judging by all the reactionary comments here, there will still be a lot of children hearing that kind of negativity.

    • We were singing the national anthem in Te Reo at my high school in the late 70s. I learned Maori songs at primary school. The difference back then was that it was NOT a political statement. We were just getting on with being NZers – Pakeha and Maori side by side

  7. Quality Free Health care is declining due to lack of effective policy around constantly expanding population demand in NZ.

    This includes the ability for foreign nationals to easily get permanent ability for free social services in NZ with permanent residency and citizenship but not necessarily live in NZ and pay any taxes here. It is estimated that around 1 million people have this ability (aka team of 3 million 20 years ago is now 5 million and growing).

    This means many foreign dual nationals can ‘cherry pick’ to have children and retire here or live here if they are on low incomes (or have relatives who can do that), which is the most expensive demands on NZ healthcare/social services.

    Meanwhile this ability is not being measured in immigration forecasting, aka there may be huge ‘debt’ of new people who may tax zero to little taxes in NZ, while be able to come back to NZ at any time and claim benefits.

    We are seeing this with Covid when planes full of people with Covid are rushing back to take advantage of NZ’s free MIQ, health care and so forth. Some are foreign pensioners who have Covid. When the threat abates, they can then return back to their old lives in their old countries. (After buying a property or two in NZ which is their ‘family’ home. (sarcasm) .

    Meanwhile for frequent users of the NZ health systems, many of the new businesses such as takeout or importing in poor quality food (juice with MDMA aka Sroubek) seem to be food related and negatively effect the local population.

    Type 2 diabetes for example effects 250,000+ people in NZ
    Obesity effects 30% of the NZ population.
    Smoking is a huge drain on the health system and clearly there is an expanding and lucrative business in keeping smokers going in NZ. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/115014183/cigarette-smuggling-case-defendants-keep-names-secret-to-protect-children-employees

    Tobacco and alcohol are essential businesses in NZ during Covid.

    Coronavirus: Cigarettes are essential, MBIE confirms
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/120654996/coronavirus-cigarettes-are-essential-mbie-confirms

    ‘Hit’ jobs case: PR consultant apologises and promises cash to settle defamation case that came from Dirty Politics
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/hit-jobs-case-pr-consultant-apologises-and-promises-cash-to-settle-defamation-case-that-came-from-dirty-politics/C4KN5H42UUOCSXD7OFXGZ6YCEA/

    Health care in NZ is extremely efficient but funding is not keeping up with the growing demand where NZ seems to be interested in supporting both legal and illegal harmful businesses expanding here, and leaving the more principled advocates for better healthcare in the lurch.

  8. Agree this tactic is dumb, National if they were smart would be going all out to get the Maori/pacific vote, National has a story to tell, like it or not they were the first major party to have a Maori leader and they also had a female maori deputy, Keys govt oversaw huge reforms to maori and the largest series of treaty settlements in History and Maori and Pacific islanders are by and large socially conservative in fact National if they were really smart would appeal to the regions and Maori, pacifica, Asian and indian and socially conservative working class voters of all ethnicities and leave Labour/Greens the suburbs and central cities as Labour and the Greens go on these woke vanity blasphemy and men hating witch hunts Nats should be releasing decent policies to look sane and moderate and just to get headlines when Lab/greens vote them down ie l Keynesian housing policies, first $10 k tax free and releasing pharmac and especially cancer treatment policies and get labour to vote them down and make labour look like partisans HELL if they really were smart they’d introduce a weed decriminalization bill and see if labour votes it down, honestly I could see that method really hurting Labour (putting forward bills that Labours base would like and Labour supports in theory only for labour to vote down) but instead of trying to be moderate pragmatic conservatives they are going mental at every moving car.

  9. Sadly, to replace a bloated DHB system, with another duplicated service is no solution. NZ is already struggling to resource the current system. A Maori health system will be inferior, as even with all the money in the world wont be able to resource services adequately. Poor resourcing is already one of the main drivers in poorer regional services and poorer health outcomes for rural communities. It is an injustice and discrimination to segregate Maori health into an inferior system. Having separate services has absolutely no impact on rendering services and health outcomes. Maori is already extensively involved in the health care of Maori. If the current system is not providing the services required Maori’s own management is to blame as they are already function as segregated units in DHB’s. A full integration of Maori services would have been a far better solution to achieve better clinical outcomes.

    Health should never be a political game. In this instance Judith is correct.

  10. Wrong.
    It is possible to support Maori language, culture and tikanga without having separate Maori govt. agencies.

    In this case Collins is right to question the move towards further ethnic separatism, through the creation of yet another race based bureaucracy.

    She is also correct to say there needs to be a national conversation about where this is going, and how far (e.g. education, justice?) it might extend. The typical screeching about ‘white supremacy’ whenever these questions are raised are wearing thin on intelligent people’s ears.

    Where in the treaty of waitingi does it say ‘separate but equal’? There was a time when the left in this country represented the working class of all races, now it has fully embraced a racist ideology disguised as progressive. More and more NZers of all colours are seeing through this divisive bullshit.

  11. Wrong.
    It is possible to support Maori language, culture and tikanga without having separate Maori govt. agencies.

    In this case Collins is right to question the move towards further ethnic separatism, through the creation of yet another race based bureaucracy.

    She is also correct to say there needs to be a national conversation about where this is going, and how far (e.g. education, justice?) it might extend. The typical screeching about ‘white supremacy’ whenever these questions are raised are wearing thin on intelligent people’s ears.

    Where in the treaty of waitingi does it say ‘separate but equal’? There was a time when the left in this country represented the working class of all races, now it has fully embraced a racist ideology disguised as progressive. More and more NZers of all colours are seeing through this divisive bullshit.

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