Media Council tosses out complaints about Tusiata Avia The Savage Coloniser poem published on Stuff
Stuff published the poem The 250th Anniversary of James Cook’s Arrival in New Zealand – written by author Tusiata Avia – which depicted hunting down “white men like” the British explorer. The poem was published within an article about Avia’s book The Savage Coloniser making its stage show debut.
Multiple complaints were submitted to the Media Council and Creative New Zealand received backlash from the ACT Party after revelations the stage show received taxpayer funding.
The Media Council, in a decision released on Friday, said those complaints have not been upheld.
According to the decision, the complainants “have right to express their disgust and disagreement, take a different view of colonisation, write letters to the editor, not to read Stuff and consume other media. But they do not have the right to not be offended”.
“Indeed, this poem is clearly intended to offend and to angrily challenge people’s views on colonisation, as explained in the feature. We note the Media Council does not have principles on taste and decency; that is the purview of the editor and if readers don’t like a publication’s taste they can write to the editor or get their news elsewhere,” the decision said.
What the fuck is this nonsense over a poem? Why is my sanity tested sweet Lord? Why?
Ok.
So a taxpayer funded poem that expresses the cultural anxiety and anger of being Polynesian in a white settler nation uses violent imagery and the performance art Right have taken snowflake trigger level offence and have complained to the Human Rights Commission and Media Council?
Oh Fuck right off!
Look, the only two issues with publicly funded art is:
1: Is it any good?
2: We need fuck loads more money in publicly funded art!
Those are the only two parameters, and on the first parameter Tusiata Avia fails miserably.
Excerpt from the poem:
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
It’s a tired boring teenage rant poem missing unicorns crying rainbow tears level banality, but she has every fucking right to express herself with such tired anger and Creative NZ have every right to back her freedom of expression!
Yes, artists are exempt from the strict letter of the hate speech laws, the same way we give comedians that leeway, the same way we give many important voices of a liberal progressive democracy! This is the very nuance we demand and yet here we have the performance art Right manufacturing outrage the exact same way the woke do!
It’s a tired poem that uses violent imagery, as a defender of Free Speech I absolutely stand by her right to be a mediocre poet!
Attempting to twist her poem and its taxpayer funded roots into hate speech is a reminder to the Left that we should always defend free speech because the fucking right always attempt to use hate speech laws as a means of strangling off voices they don’t like!
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Martyn – Wrong! If I wrote an poem saying what she said, but replaced the term White, to Brown, I would be arrested…and so I should be!
Over 150 complaints to the Media Council/Human Rights Commission, a record amount, where brushed aside…
Nope, you shouldn’t be arrested but you shouldn’t get government funding nor protected species status from the woketards either.
The NZ taxpayers shouldn’t be funding ANY “arts” be it TV, books, movies or this dross.
If something is worthwhile it will attract a sufficient audience to make it worthwhile for the creator to have made it. If not, it goes into the bin with all the other rubbish.
Jays – The charge is ‘Incitement to Violence’, under the Crimes Act 1961…
so, hate speech and incitement to violence is fine, and should be sponsored by the Government, if:
it is from a creative or
if it from a woman or
it is from a member of an ethnic minority or
it is aimed at an oppressive group?
All good then.
The only people in New Zealand protesting against free speech is the Left.
Posie Parker?(violence included)
bob look at the first 2 posts don’t think they are lefty wokesters do you?
No agree gagarin.
Bob You sound like one of those awful men who wear singlets. Get some vitamin D. Think of ducks skidding to a halt on frozen Dulwich Pond in winter – a lovely image to behold. Eat more berries, fewer nuts.
Sorry but I don’t own a singlet.
Thanks for the memories though.
I’m currently living in a mountain resort which is wonderful.
The Autumn colours breathtaking.
Wish you were here Hollyhock.
Are you under 15 years old and male Hollyhock…kind regards Bob?
Says the right wing daily blog troll.
P.S. Did those protesting Posie Parker not have the right to free speech? Not all of them violent( throwing tomatoes haha) not all of them from the left, fact.
It’s okay for people to say whatever they want but we can’t allow anyone who says things like”people like you” anywhere near the levers of power.
The poem was/is shite, the racism in it was/is shite, replace white with brown / black and ask yourself if that shite piece of ‘poetry’ would have ever been printed. But i guess these are the times of the lowest common denominator and being against ‘white – presumably cis – male’ is ok. Cause it is.
@rb
I wasn’t going to write this; But you’re a fucking idiot. But wait, there’s more. What’s even worse is you’re a boring idiot. And the rest of you including you @ reactionary sausage i.e. nathan, bob, ada, etc… God. You lot go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and, as do I, but the difference is you’re boring. You will think your brain spurts are awesome an’ that but they’re not. Your drab, right wing drivel seeps out of you like that pong in the kitchen no one can find the source of. You saturate the comments section with dull, damp, brain-fart mouth-fluff. God help anyone you corner at a party without their anaesthetic to relieve them of your company. Stop it and go away. The Natzo’s are a dead turd floating. Get over it. They’re done. We can all see that National’s neo-liberalism has done its damage and now all it can do is droop in a corner and brain-fart out a tired stink via you mopes so how desperate must National be? Personally, I’d say quite fucking desperate. The national party has wrecked terrible havoc on we poor bastards. They invented ACT and applied neoliberalism then plonked roger douglas in as a muppet to give it substance and direction and he, in turn, inserted the twerker like a suppository up ACT to beguile the terminally stupid with his stoat face and twerker arse.
Now, look carefully? See when MMP was dropped on us like a fly shit? I.e. Sly and nasty. And who dropped it? *Jimbo bolger’s Natzo Party did, that’s who. AO/NZ was sold the logical fallacy that we AO/NZ’ers had all the choices in the world…. Oh! How thrilling! How wonderful! Oh how a huge sack of bullshit. The truth and reality is that we AO/NZ’ers where disempowered. We were sold the idea of many options but were in fact rendered powerless. We were chopped up into little pieces and we’re still politically running around like headless chickens.
All Mouse-face The Twerk has to do is run around squawking about what ever might work to distract us from the cold harsh reality of our politics which is to write that we don’t really have democratic politics at all. What we do have instead is capitalist fascism and the above storm in the tea cup is as good an example of that as I can see.
A very public Commission of inquiry into the personal and financial relationships between our politicians and big ol’ money please.
The above is a junk Post to enable The Twerk to get a little limelight and aided and abetted by his merry band of budgies to shit and squawk in support.
* Bolger was born to an Irish immigrant family in Ōpunake, Taranaki. Before entering politics, he farmed in the Waikato area and was involved in Federated Farmers, a nationwide agricultural association.
What have I always written about federated farmers? It’s funny how our primary industry managed to hatch the most nefarious right wingers and yet I don’t see many cockies who are also Kiwi-As multi billionaires. Any one have any questions to ask Jim Dandy the MMP monkey and his corral of riche natzo cock suckers?
Poetry. It doesn’t matter what we might think of poetry so long as poetry’s written so that it might give us something to think about. One of mine. You’re welcome.
I’m not religious Countryboy but amen and halleluja to your post , those cunts( thank you Marama) are so boring I bet they wives left them long ago . Although Bob probably married his reflection such is his adulation for himself, high in his mountain resort of Dulwich.
Needed to be said CB-sausage and the rest are pests with a woeful signal to noise ratio.
More taxpayer funded resources going to waste on terrible, poetry.
I think it’s fine she wrote it, but feel it’s tone deaf to promote it on stuff. How many more hand outs do NZ woke media need as their readership plummets?
If had been a different race or gender then the shit would hit the fan and it would be banned. Thus we now have a double standard of woke, that people are not happy about in NZ.
Lets change the race and gender and see if it’s still ok? Is it now a hate crime? Thus we have a big problem that seems to elude the NZ government and censors by having a dual system of race/gender/ hate speech.
or black men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, poof?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
seems like there are many different versions of tolerance in woke world. Some violence and racial hate are ok, but others are hate speech. Maybe why people are dividing not unified under the woke umbrella and knowledge and tolerance is lost.
Anyway going to go and groom my kids to be victims and ram raid and hate others on race and gender and hate debate too. Cos I can. Sarcasm.
I am a bit confused here ( not unusual) are you blaming the left or the right for both the decision and the fact that it needed to be investigated in the first place. David Seymour is up in arms so it must be the correct decision by the media council . Remember its only free speech when David Seymour says it is .
So your issue is with David Seymour, not the poetry or the poet or the fact that that piece of race hate was tax payer funded?
No different than your race hate RB and as tax payers we pay your benefit.
Surely this poem is free speech Seymour?
Or is only free speech when YOU say it is?
I have no objection to the poem, as long as if it’s fair game for anyone writing such drivel about stabbing any other race. But we know that’s impossible…
However what I really object to is working 60 hours a week to pay for this kind of shite.
Anyone who isn’t irredeemably biased would have to admit that, if the situation were inverted and a White man wrote a poem that was hostile towards brown women, we’d never hear the end of it and the poet would have their life ruined. It’s pretty redundant to point out the inconsistency, but there you have it.
Agreed
Agree with Martyn’s argument that this is Art but you are 100% correct Fidel. This is typical double standard, the media council wont stand up for anyone with a right wing view (oops I meant centrist these days) but suddenly starts speaking free speech when it suits them. They are right of course but dont walk the talk.
Agreed
Part of free speech is to be outraged if you dislike content and be free to share your opinion and complain to the relevant authorities and trust that they will act justly.
Posie Parker’s voice was amplified by the mob who forced her off the stage without the opportunity to speak and to be heard. And those in authority did nothing to protect the right of women to speak and be heard. Yet many heard the message clearly.
When government wastes tax dollars, it is our right to raise our concerns. When government fails to protect our rights we have the obligation to protest.
Johan Thiart – Free Speech or Hate Speech…the author of that hate, needs to see one about that hate.
“as a defender of Free Speech I absolutely stand by her right to be a mediocre poet!”
Absolutely. But not at taxpayers expense, surely?
It’s not the free speech issue, it’s the clear double-standard involved: brown people can obviously openly express violent sentiments against White people (we deserve it, apparently), yet White people could never be allowed to reciprocate because of “muh racism.” We should be all free to use our speech to abuse others (short of open incitement), but it cannot go only one way.
Exactly, good point.
No, bad point.
In New Zealand righties and tories traditionally detest publicly funded art (unless it tickles their particular fancy), and art displayed in public spaces and places. Non figurative art in particular winds them up–‘a five year old could have done that’–kind of idiocy.
In Whangārei there was a long battle with the Philistines to get the Hundertwasser Centre green lit, let alone built. Yet, COVID and storms aside, it will get the tills jingling in future due to increased visitor numbers and has led to rejuvenation of the river adjacent parts of CBD.
Taxpayer funded art is as valid as weather event subsidies for moaning farmers–too wet, too dry, too cold…
Agree
100% liberty. Crap Poetry, Refurbishing Reserve Bank foyers, Rainbow pedestrian crossings, 3 now 10 waters advertising and PR goldmine, light rail debacle – the list of shite Wellington decisions is endless – meanwhile the real Wellington sewage flows on, untrammeled, and the poor live on the streets in cardboard. The managerial class powerbrokers in this country wouldn’t know a priority expenditure decision if it booted them up the backside. If she wants to spout putrid racist poetry – fine with me, I won’t listen – but I would rather my taxes went to more deserving Kiwis on ‘struggle street’.
It’s ( admittedly atrocious) “art”. I am sure there would be other funded works that you might like but others would be outraged at taxpayer money being spent on.
Fidel probably has a point about reversing the roles but I guess the problem with that is a bunch of Polynesians didn’t paddle up the Thames and help themselves.
Brilliant!
Yes, but a load of Romans, and then a load of Vikings, certainly did.
Very well put Mr Trout. And where are the reparations from Italy to Wessex?
They probably would have if they were sufficiently technically advanced. I don’t think it was a superior sense of morality that prevented Polynesians from colonising Europe, it was simply that they didn’t have the capability.
Well I guess we will never know but it’s a bit of a weird argument to say “ but they would have if they could have”. They didn’t.
Rhymes with banker.
Bob?
part of free speech is being outraged….hope this applies to libary drag queens and pronouns too….
it’s one of those decisions made in terms of ‘how can we get out of this bind’ which will nip at the rear parts in the future
Calling the poem “mediocre” is flattering. In fact calling it poetry at all is probably flattering.
But what I redeem from this tasteless waste of taxpayer dollars is that the Media Council thinks people don’t have the right to not be offended. Hooray!
Though I’m wondering if that applies to all people…
How much did the New Zealand taxpayers pay for this poem….?? I’m just trying to work out the hourly rate….If a poet wrote this in one hour , or even a morning, it couldn’t have taken much more, …then this lass is onto something …As Martyn said , the arts needs truck loads of more funding , and going by the way this lass has been short changed , apart from the very free publicity of her craft, there is no doubt her next poem will be more expensive and more creative…..I’m sure Bert , Steve , Gag and Nathan will be like myself…Waiting with bated breath , for the next exquisite masterpiece from this new excellent entrepreneur…
Creative New Zealand? Oh dear. This is the level which these people function at themselves. They almost certainly thought that this was a good poem.
We have to be honest here and admit that a half-decent New Zealand lady poet like Fleur Adcock, or Lauris Edmond…or gentle Eileen Colonialist Duggan… would be totally beyond the comprehension of Creative New Zealand.
These are the ignorami who believe that William Shakespeare buggered up the colonisation of New Zealand after having incited it in the first place. That’s who they are, shuffling along Lambton Quay dressed like paid funeral mourners whose other specialty is advertising birds’ nest soup the way that Dr Elizabeth Canary does, and invariably, invariably, with the backs of their shoes dirty- ours not to wonder why.
The fact that the Media Council still exists is a surprise though. What on earth have they been doing?
Media being the plural of medium, one wonders if they make their decisions in sandalwood scented rooms with the lights off, holding hands under a table with a fringed cloth, and hoping like hell that the voice of Uncle Frank doesn’t start speaking from the past, and that the dead stay well and truly dead.
Media Council ? Oh God. Predictable bunch of egotistical irritants more concerned with impressing each other and being culturally correct and getting onto as many committees and reviews as they possibly can,than wasting time on aesthetics, let alone truth or beauty. The easy money people. Nice work if you can get it. Ever been at a dinner party of journalists ? They’re so busy showing off that you could feed them pizza with bird droppings on and they wouldn’t notice.
Bearing in mind that it is easier to get into heaven than be published in “ Landfall”, expect to spend eternity in bliss, never having to see or hear from these social vandals again. Try not to think about child povidy, or cold lonely old people, or dislocated adolescents, or evil drug pushers, or cops watching women getting beaten, or mums desperate about kids home alone, or whether our decent hard working grandparents deserve to be constantly vilified at the expense of we, the idiot tax payers, and just plant spuds in buckets and secrete the books which they’d burn if we let them near them.
beautifully articulated there Snow White>
Hey Shona, “ Landfall” only paid me 11c a line for my three poems, totalling 49 lines altogether, ‘ tho that was a while back. I was pleased to be paid anything at all and it’s a doubly whammy to be going to heaven as well… would have preferred Africa, Russia, Scandinavia, and the Greek Isles, but who knows…Do they have mashed potatoes in heaven? Musical instruments other than harps? Politicians and estate agents ? Books ? Bluff oysters ? Bangers and gravy ? Freddy Mercury, Klaus Tennstedt, Raoul Wallenberg, Captain James Cook? Could be interesting…
Snow White, I have it on good authority that in Heaven you can also hear hammered dulcimer, Fender-Rhodes electric piano, acoustic piano, Hohner clavinet, electric guitars, electric bass, and string quartets. Not all at the same time, of course.
Fabulous
If Stuff published this person’s writing just doing their usual anti-white mischief making, they were being pretty juvenile. If their intention was to incite hatred then they need to take a hard look at themselves.
There are people who believe what they read in newspapers and sometimes act on it. Stuff certainly wallow in bashing pioneering New Zealand with an absence of both critical thinking and historical knowledge, but MSM are generally like that now, and the politicians are no better. Captain Cook, another great man of history being soiled by a bunch of nobodies, is sickening, but Creative New Zealand seem to be systemic Neanderthals now and Sepuloni ,Minister of Culture, should explain why.
Stuff is about clicks… Nothing else.
They gave up being an impartial News agency the moment they took govt funding.
Unfortunately for Tusiata a good number of those SUVs are driving to the nearest church as some of the colonisers were excellent con artists.
New strategy: publish angry hate poem as art – to get around the hate speech filters and laws. That’s exactly how that poem reads to me – hate speech. I wonder if the manifest of the CHC killer was made into a nice poem…would it be freely available then? Or instructions how to kill or make bombs done as poems…?
bloody good question Krautet!!!
Come on Sour Kraut, The Kraut goes Wild, define hate speech?
Squeaky.
Ok I’ll give it a go. Hate speech can be defined as follows:
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
Exactly. Art or not, I think it reaches the standard quite nicely
Well thats a deranged interpretation.
Kraut “ …hate speech “. Agree. I must be right wing. One of those defenders of crucifying Captain Cook, claimed that he cut nipples from babies. They’re lying psycho haters running amok in the name of some sort of freedom, just like the brain damaged bastards who belted up the women in Auckland.
Just like Posey P and her child grooming sex ring
Seems that’s okay Wheel in Gentle Annie’s eyes.
Decades ago I went to Kings Cross in Sydney and saw Les Girls. Very glamorous – outdid most women. Now everyone seems to want to be in the act. But what about all the ordinary people around trying to live their lives in trying times, are they to be pushed off centre stage? Answer – yes unless they show their sensitive sides by writing poetry.
which definitely is not easy so would expand minds which at present are too narrow.
Carlotta seems to have been an enduring star.
https://sydneytransgender.com/talent-profile-carlotta.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugclT0fSQEE
https://worldqueerstory.org/tag/he-did-it-her-way-the-legend-of-les-girls/
Les Girls were brilliant back in the day.