White Privileges

On Monday night’s unintentionally funny “Straight Talk” live podcast on the Family Fist NZ Youtube channel former Act leader Rodney Hide (who had a very pronounced lisp for some unknown reason) told the other four in Bob McCroskrie’s online pulpit and the couple of hundred in the online congregation that the racial tension in the North Island was palpable. Palpable! He mentioned that he went to live in the South Island to avoid the “racial menace”. Racial menace? RACIAL MENACE! He didn’t explain what he meant by racial menace, but if it was palpable it wouldn’t need an explanation would it?

The South Island doesn’t have this racial menace, there is no palpable racial tension in the South Island – that was the pulpit consensus. At least the white people felt that way and that wasn’t being challenged (the kupapa idiot was on too – can’t remember his name). But no explanation or examination, no breakdown, no accounting for what that means exactly. What did he mean, exactly?

Who? Who is the racial tension between? Why? Why is this racial tension occurring? What? What is the tension resulting in? How? How does this tension manifest itself? When? When did this start happening? Explain that in the context of “racial menace”. I would like to hear Rodney Hide explain it and give some examples for us to understand what he finds to be racially menacing.

Are we talking culturally challenging, or ethnically awkward? Something religiously provocative, or uncouth etiquette? Is it – an attitude? The government banned gang patches so presumably he’s not talking about that element of potential menace it must be something else. Is it something else? Something to do with race specifically, because – as the man said – there is a racial menace.

New Zealand is a colony. Just like Rhodesia in so many ways, only the natives won the war. Just like it. Watch the clips from the 1950s to the 70s. Similar scenarios in many respects. And aguably the New Zealand Prime Minister who did the most for race relations was… Sir Garfield Todd. Notice the similarities in the mentality of the white settler population. They too – in polite society, on camera – employed the same vagaries of language to skirt around their despicable racism. Maybe instead of “Maorification” – as Hosking put to the PM on his show last week – it would have been “Africanisation”. Why compromise white Rhodesia with native signage when the white government can enforce English only? NZ is the same thing only the white settler population is in the majority rather than 5% so even less self-aware and more prone to fancy that European hegemony was permanent. At the end of the Rhodesian experiment near every white was armed – that was racial menace.

But what does Rodney Hide mean by it in his North Island/South Island context? He can’t mean Chinese – wasn’t he married to one? So which races are involved in making it tense for Rodney – at the mall? – at the park? – at the traffic lights? – at the Koru lounge? Does Rodney have a particular trigger race?

Explaining racism, prejudice, bigotry etc. appears futile. What is gained – or not – from attempting to understand it? Feelings are facts regardless of why they may arise. Instincts are human nature that don’t require justification. The logic of prejudice is often so idiotic writing it out itself is idiotic. And yet, it’s 2025 and here we are. What elements are racial and what is tension and when do the two combine to meet the racially menacing threshhold to trigger white flight. That’s the equation Rhodesians and, apparently according to Rodney Hide, also North Islanders face.

Which brings us to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee and their petulant, partisan punishment of the Te Pati Maori MPs who performed a haka during the party vote of the Treaty Principles Bill.

Marilyn Waring claims that she was physically man-handled into the lobby by her male caucus colleagues. I recall Jim Bolger – as leader of the opposition – threw a biro pen across the chamber at Geoffrey Palmer. I remember Dover Samuels, shaking with anger, walking across and staunching out Richard Prebble and being physically escorted away by Parekura Horomia. I remember Trevor Mallard inviting Tau Henare outside for a fight that then occurred in the lobby. I remember Winston Peters moving seats so he was directly across from Russel Norman on the other side of the aisle and launching an unrelenting barrage of barracking during the entirety of Norman’s speech. I recall the recent incident in which a furious Julie-Anne Genter marched over to Matt Doocey’s desk, threw her papers down, waved her arms about and from a distance of only a few inches shouted into his face. I recall about the same time a National MP Tim van de Molen had stood over the Labour Chair Shanan Halbert in a select committee and dared him to get to his feet. I note only last week Brooke Van Velden brought “c**t” back so hard in all her cry-bully gratuitousness it puts shame on the House’s former chief exponent of the word, Marama Davidson (remember that campaign?). Rimmer drove a Land Rover up the steps of parliament – as a Nat MP had driven a tractor up twenty years before him – after he was warned not to and only stopped after security threatened to intervene.

I remember all those antics in the chamber and about the House. What I don’t remember was what the punishment was for each of these offences. I remember Mallard and Henare were privately prosecuted for fighting – but that’s it – I cannot recall at all what the privileges committee did, if anything, about those incidents. Indeed, the c-word being said in the House must be a first for a Minister in a Commonwealth country reckons John Tamihere, and yet that passed with no rebuke whatsoever let alone a privileges committee complaint.

Whatever the penalties for the screeds of padt transgressions we know they were far less than the record punishment the majority of the privileges committee had recommended for the haka infraction. Far, far less. If we put them all on a spectrum of intimidation where would that haka be? Bundling someone through the lobby doors, throwing a pen at someone, fighting someone in the lobby, standing over someone, screaming in someone’s face, taking a seat next to someone to harangue them. How intimidatory was that haka compared to those incidents? How menacing were those incidents?

Of all the speakers and all the speeches made during the privileges debate in the House on suspending the three Te Pati Maori MPs there wasn’t one I entirely agreed with. There were many fine speeches – all of them against the 1 and 3 week punishments – but none were complete to my satisfaction. There were many poor speeches – all of them in favour of the 1 and 3 week punishments – but none of them were anything other than the braying and taunting of schoolyard bullies cornering the new kids. Quite shameful. When in the majority one’s arguments are seldom required to make any sense to be accepted, and when beating down on a Maori party it doesn’t even require having a reason – they’re menacing ex definitio.

Everyone had said there had to be rules, but TPM were arguing special circumstances in this case. Everyone who considered the rules were broken had varying opinions on the severity of punishment it warranted. I was interested in the precedents. Adrian Rurawhe had warned the House it was about to create a heinous precedent that would be used by future governments and that the ones inflicting it in this term maybe the ones suffering from it when they are out of office. If only. And they will deserve it – every MP that voted, party line as it was all the way – will deserve to have the book thrown at them for any future infraction by a left government. It will be utu – reciprocation. Please don’t let the Greens flake out on this when it arises.