Waitangi Day 2019 – With Brash going, could it explode?

What a difference a year makes. Waitangi 2018 captured this iconic image of Jacinda serving breakfast at the Waitangi celebrations after a 5 day tour of the area, paying homage to the birthplace of our nation unlike any previous Prime Minister.

And locals loved her for it.

Fast forward to 2019, and the hopes and promises Jacinda embodied haven’t arrived.

Changes to the toxic culture in welfare is just lip service, Kiwbuild is a joke for the children of the middle classes, poverty continues to bite and inequality builds. Suicide continues unabated and homelessness rots as deeply as it ever did.

Labour’s shock at winning led them to have no plan of attacking the neoliberal public services they inherited and that in turn has led to bureaucratic gridlock that has gone no where.

This matters.

Māoridom not only handed all the Māori electorates to Labour, they gave them huge party votes i  the general seats, Willie Jackson worked for Labour, Labour have given him nothing in return.

So this Waitangi Day is shaping up to be one where Māori feel cheated, that won’t erupt  directly towards Labour because Māori still adore Jacinda and still hope to see real change, but that frustration has the potential to erupt in other places.

There are numerous groups positioning to gain platform this year.

Brian Tamaki will be appearing to demand why his special brand of religious extremism isn’t getting any Government support. His position is one I’d feel some genuine sympathy for because he is right about his programs helping the worst offenders the State have given up on, the problem (other than the extreme homophobia) is that he hasn’t actually put in a funding request for these programs.

There is a Hokianga hikoi on water that should be given attention.

There is also the anti-1080 fanatics appearing, and those people are so crazy any madness is possible but the most concerning appearance will be by Don Brash who is appearing at the Te Tii marae forum to express his special kind of racism that could truly test patience.

In a year when Māori have felt cheated by Jacinda doing little, allowing Don to turn up feels like the kind of thing that could explode.

Nothing is as combustable as let down hopes.

Waitangi 2019 has no obvious fuse to it, but there is a cocktail of things that combined could become very unstable very quickly.

Let’s hope for an event of celebration that matches 2018.