WAATEA NEWS COLUMN: David Seymour, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke and Willie Jackson must be the 2024 Māori Politicians of the Year
As 2024 limps home with 4.8% unemployment (9% for our Māori whanau), public service corrosion and ratcheting race relation tensions, it falls to columnists to try and sum up the year and those who impacted it.
2024 was a year of pushback against this hard right Government’s anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-beneficiary agenda. The 84 000 strong Hikoi in Parliament was the largest ever protest in our history.
You can’t pretend that wasn’t significant.
In my mind the 3 Māori Politicians of 2024 are obvious, David Seymour, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke and Willie Jackson.
David Seymour because love him or loath him, has managed more power as a Māori politician than almost anyone else in Parliament. His disastrously flawed Treaty Principles Referendum Bill will dominate half of next year and he has managed to consistently overshine the actual Prime Minister all of this year. He has single handedly taken over the entire narrative of the Government and he’s ramming his interests through first.
Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke because she became the symbol of a new generation secure in their identity and who will refuse to be second class citizens in their own lands. Her Haka has been viewed over 700million times online and is now being copied in school haka after school haka. She embodies a new hope that can’t and won’t be extinguished.
Willie Jackson must be acknowledged in any Māori Politician of the Year because his oratory skills this year went to new heights. He won the Oxford Debate, his own Parliament Speech was seen 1.7million times and his recent speech at Labour’s Conference was considered by many as the best speech ever given at conference.
Last year it was New National MP for Rangitata, James Meager’s maiden speech that was being celebrated as a new political identity for Māori, in just a year this Government has burnt so much political capital for ACT’s race baiting stunt that James has barely appeared again in the headlines.
If 2024 was a year of rising, 2025 will be the year of crashing as the economic crisis collides with the identity crisis and the Treaty Principles Referendum Bill will dominate all dialogue.
That Mister Seymour’s doing not too bad for a diversity hire – maybe there’s something in all this woke stuff.
Like myself David is a 6% Maori so should not be touted as Maori .And if he beleives he is Maori he needs to start behaving as a Maori and use Maori values .
I bet he never once mentioned he was Maori when he was living off shore and has no doubt caught many of his doners off guard who though he was the perfect gun toting red neck to push their agenda of race hate .Remember his lies that Maori were getting the water ,well bugger me all those redneck councils that were on hies race hate wagon against 3 waters are now jumping on the 3 waters faster than rats jumping off a sinking ship .
How should maori behave Gorden.
Should maori behave to get your approval.
Your a stone cold racist mate.
Yep, his bullshit is causing people to upgrade their BS detectors and room reading abilities.
Māori have led the way on fightback against the CoC agenda, and a number of Pākehā and other Tau Iwi are in support re sinking Incel Dave’s “trash the treaty” Bill. Te Tiriti is for all NZers that realise what needs to be done to become a more equal society. Māori men dying seven years earlier is not exactly the “special treatment” most would want to experience for themselves.
The next challenge is for others to stand up and be part of a mass movement, such as unions, which ACT is further attacking by allowing bosses to deduct pay for partial strikes, which was overturned by Labour years back. ACT is so anti union that David Seymour has been talking about Ambulance officers doing their full job but wearing message Ts rather than full uniform as a partial strike!
ps. don’t go to the blood quantum argument about how “Māori” people are, it is long discredited, the fact is Māori numbers are rising at replacement level, and will soon reach 20% of the population while others are below at around 1.6%.
As this article states Seymour has Maori blood,it seems to me,doesn’t know much about his Heritage, he is Pakeha thru and thru,obviously ashamed of being Maori