MEDIAWATCH: Why Patrick Smellie is wrong about Māori Party being political kiss of death
I don’t like Patrick Smellie and he doesn’t like me.
Normally he writes very dull business news, but he’s stepped into Politics and reminds us that business journalists don’t understand how politics work…
BusinessDesk: Why Te Pāti Māori will struggle to be kingmaker at this election
More to the point, talking up the possibility of Te Pāti Māori holding the balance of power is just the thing to make every Pākehā who already hates calling this country Aotearoa vote for National or Act.
These are the people who grizzle about the Air New Zealand “Tiake’s Journey” safety video, hear “co-government” when the word “co-governance” is used and nod approvingly when they see the inexplicably punctuated “Stop! Three Waters” signs that festoon the sides of regional highways.
They have been radicalised, within the confines of New Zealand’s centrist politics, by a Government that has pursued a range of social justice causes – known colloquially as “woke BS” – and are now highly motivated to vote for parties on the right that are reliably promising to put a stop to the rising tide of everything.
…he takes a steaming dump on the Māori Party and claims they won’t be the Kingmaker because cracker honky hate the Māoris and the idea that the Māori Party would provide a supply and confidence arrangement and sit on the cross benches voting on each piece of legislation would drive cracker honkey into the arms of the National and ACT Party.
Couple of things.
1 – Cracker Honky already be voting for ACT and National.
2 – What Smellie is espousing regarding fear of the Māori Party on the cross benchers is the basic ignorance of most Kiwis when it comes to NZ Politics.
The Māori Party would gain in return for their supply and confidence vote basic bottom line policies that they could hold up to their supporters and the wider left as wins, and then they would go onto the cross benchers and consider their vote issue by issue, but that process also means other political parties could support Labour Government if the Māori Party demands for their vote became self indulgent and self interested.
If the Māori Party were consistently making outrageous demands for their cross bench vote, Labour could work out an arrangement with National, in fact National could have more input into legislation than they would if it was a straight Labour/Green/Māori Party Government instead of a Labour led minority Government with supply and confidence arrangements with the Māori Party.
The Fear of a Brown Planet vide Smellie is channeling is just an ignorant misunderstanding of the cross bench process rather than articulation of insight.
Put Smellie back behind the Business desk.
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I hope you are right as the thought of a National Act Government where Act have the clout to pull the strings on puppet Luxon is a frightening point. My own Labour supporting 85 year old cracker-honkey mother (as you put it) who was married to my late Tainui Maaori father and has Maaori kids and mokopuna is worried about co-governance. Despite assurances that we are not trying to take over the country she has swallowed the anti-Maaori race baiting rhetoric hook, line and sinker. She even says shit to me about Maaori and when I point out that I am Maaori she says shit like , but you are one of the good ones.
Racism runs deep in this country.
Racism goes both ways and even Willie Jackson says this Maori Party is over the top in their thinking .It was shown in Parliment yesterday they feel they have the right to do what they want to do when they want to it .If they get more power it will divide the country even more than it is now..It would not be just white and brown it would be white on white and brown on brown and other immegrants in fear and who my be inclined to leave for Australia.
Broh, you just used a racist slur for your mother, simply because someone put it there first. You are right, racism runs deep.
The problem is that all the options on the ballot are pushing nationalistic demagogy, which is either outright racialist (dividing government along racial lines), or thinly-veiled U.S. Exceptionalism (complete with neo-con’ demands for a Sino-American war and regime change in Russia).
The politicians know that at some point, local versions of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump will emerge — and the entire neoliberal project will be at risk of collapse. Any real opposition therefore must be crushed, and any discontent must be splintered along racial/religious lines, using wall-to-wall propaganda.
But who has benefitted the most from racism Trev? why did Māori Affairs have to step in and create housing for Māori Trev? and who got all the welfare state jobs when it was created Trev setting them up to be middle class don’t talk shite, please I am sick of you bias ill-informed excuses all the time? Also what happened when our Māori soldiers came back from the War Trev?
There appears to be a lot of red necks on this site today
Why blow your cover?
Lol. One can’t help wondering how last names were originally devised. For some it was clan thing, or occupation etc. But Smellie? There’s just nowhere to go with that one! And why oh why has that particular last name survived through the generations? No one ever thought to change it, ever? Bwahahaaa