Chris Trotter

THE VIOLENT REACTION by mainland Chinese university students to on-campus expressions of solidarity with Hong Kong’s democratic activists is perplexing.

IHUMATAO’s intersectional celebrations, dubbed derisively as “Wokestock” by right-wing commentator, Matthew Hooton, are being watched by unfriendly eyes. The Settler Nation has zero tolerance for the politics of radical decolonisation.

IHUMATAO is not about the law. The law is what makes the Ihumatao protest necessary. Ihumatao is not about colonisation. Ihumatao is colonisation in action.

Neoliberalism cares nothing for the markers of ethnicity, gender or sexuality. What it values is the individual who understands not only the importance of rising up the socio-economic ladder, but also the importance of “making it” in the right way.

The great problem now facing the Greens is that Labour finds itself in possession of the most likeable political face New Zealanders have encountered for many decades. When set against “Jacinda”, the Greens’ James Shaw comes across as a low-energy compromiser. Meanwhile, his co-leader, Marama Davidson, strobes identity politics in a fashion calculated to make a sizeable majority of the electorate feel decidedly queasy.

A WARBLING CHARM of magpies in the macrocarpa serenaded the windy forecourt of the service station. Two weather-beaten cockies were filling up their mud-splattered gas-guzzlers and chatting away to one another in the desultory fashion of their kind.

MANY OF US want to believe that if Jacinda Ardern watched Melanie Reid’s “Taken Generation” video, she’d be outraged. What person with a heart wouldn’t be? Reid’s exposé of Oranga Tamariki’s failings is an enormously confronting piece of journalism. It has moved Maoridom like nothing else since the Foreshore and Seabed furore of 2004-05. For that reason alone, you would think the Prime Minister might consider the 45 minutes required to watch Reid’s video, time well spent.

The pervasiveness of the rural virtue/urban vice myth similarly explains the widespread refusal of the Right to accept the reality and urgency of climate change. The countryside cannot be disentangled from the extractive and environmentally unsustainable industries it supports. But, accepting this fact means casting rural New Zealand in the role of ecological villain, rather than economic and cultural hero. Unacceptable.

Regardless of whether one views immigration as a good thing or a bad thing, there can be no disputing its dramatic impact on the demographic profile of New Zealand society. The official motivation behind the decision to transition this country away from ethnic homogeneity and towards a multicultural society may have been profoundly progressive, but its potential political consequences have always been, and continue to be, extremely dangerous.