White Privileges

ByTim Selwyn

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.

 

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60 Comments

  1. We should celebrate the haka performed in parliament. We do it in sports and everybody cheers. It is a challenge, and what is parliament if not a place to challenge?

    1. There is a time and place for everything and a hakacin parliament without authority was not the time or the place .

      1. Your definition of authority is too narrow. Tin pot dictators insist on a rigid definition but a real democracy can handle a bit of independent thought, and a Maori protest by a Maori party against an attempted treaty-denying law was exactly what was required.

      2. Trevor speaking from the position of ‘white privilege’ I feel sure.
        Naice middle class white privilege too.

      4. It was exactly the place for a haka.
        Who decided there was no place in te kawa of Parliament for a haka?
        The colonising regime.
        The rules need to be re written.

    1. Right there is so much I don’t understand aboout NZAO I must make it up to the sacred meeting place that is our hub.

    2. I did that last week, can you tell me why Rodders is so scared of all those Chinese and Korean students? They didn’t seem particularly scary to me…

  6. Meh, racism clearly goes both ways and gets routinely stoked by both “sides”. I’m not surprised that tensions are rising, and it isn’t isolated to just New Zealand and it seems to me that Social Media plays a pivotal role. Facts are that single race countries don’t really have these issues (e.g. Japan, China, Russia, Hungary, Poland etc), so maybe this whole “what we need is a great big melting pot” (yes I’m old enough to remember that song) idea was doomed to fail from the get go.

  7. Rodney Hide was ‘racially menaced’ a few years ago when the Waikato Expressway opened.
    He felt the menace was palpable when he came to cross the Waikato River and saw the new carved pou whenua installations. They mark significant landmarks or commemorate significant events in the area. The Waikato River is certainly a significant landmark.
    Poor Rodney got the shock of his life and felt very strongly that visitors to NZ would feel just as put out as he was.
    What a ludicrous and immature reaction from a man who considered himself intelligent enough to be in parliament.

    Visitors to NZ surely come to see unique Māori culture. The pou would welcome them again and draw attention to the river which they could then follow for miles, going away and coming back to it on occasion, and finally finding its source in the beautiful central North Island.

    I found it hard to fathom the utter stupidity of Hide’s reaction. However, he must have been racially menaced and we didn’t understand. He obviously didn’t get counselling at the time and is still traumatised.

    Just admitting to being a North Islander in the South Is. is enough to get yourself racially menaced.

    1. Rodney Hide the ‘perk buster’ caught out stealing from ‘hard working Kiwi tax payers’. Brian Edwards once called him despicable in an interview.

      1. Oh yes, perk buster Rodney who paved the way for Seymour to accept the biggest perk of all. Unearned, unentitled and undeserving.

        1. Then there was that Act MP David Garrett who went to a cemetery, copied the details of a dead two-year-old baby and used those details to obtain a fake passport. Really nice people this Act lot eh.

  8. Mr Bradbury, deft of you to start with some remarks by Rodney Hide and segue into a defence of your favourite separatists. The Maori Party doesn’t get to set which of Parliament’s rules for behaviour it will follow and which it will ignore. A government with more courage than the one we have would have chucked the perpetrators out completely to do their theatricals outside in their own time and their own expense. And by the way, did you miss Ms Genter’s abject apology for her childlike tantrum?

    2. Oh Wiremu , your favorite left wing attack on Martyn was completely blown out of the water, keep your head in the sand and keep taking your blue pill.

    3. Wiremu you patronising snob! I bet you aren’t even Maori yourself and using a known Maori name as a screen behind which to throw your tutae at the people of the whenua.
      (I’m Pakeha so I apologise to Maori for my indelicate tone.)

      1. I bet you aren’t a small grey songbird yourself and using a known bird name as a screen behind which to throw your poop at kiwis.
        Look, having a Maori name doesn’t necessarily mean you are Maori. Usually it does, but not always. Remember Rewi Alley? I don’t think he was Maori. But it doesn’t matter anyway.
        As I have said before, I believe that everyone who makes public comment on-line or anywhere else should do so under their real identity. That would be much better for all of us. It would raise the quality of debate and it would promote personal integrity.

        1. Talking through your hat Geoff F. A bit more thought, less reaction and nit-picking from you would be useful and stop you tearing off on the wrong scent. Kiwis smell quite strongly in the bush and dogs can easily pick up their scent. ‘But it doesn’t matter anyway’.
          So when you have raced off on your excursion looking at some imagined concept, do come back to the point under discussion here and you’ll be back on track.

  9. Good one Tim. The “racial menace” thing was the classic dog whistle of course. We all know who he was talking about. And Parliament’s partisan punishment of Te Pati Maori is indeed evidence that the system is colonialist.
    “New Zealand is a colony” as you state, though many (all of them colonialists of course) try to deny it.
    My rejoinder to them (without needing to mention race or to use the word “indigenous”) is:
    If your “founding document” is purportedly a cession of sovereignty to a foreign state, then you are a colony.
    If you have a foreign head of state not of your own choosing, then you are a colony.
    If all your legislators must pledge allegiance to the head of a foreign state, then you are a colony.
    If you can betray your country as a matter of principle, then you are a colony.
    If your flag is an adaptation of the flag of a foreign state, then you are a colony.
    If the formal name of your state implicitly references a foreign ruler, then you are a colony.
    If your largest city, your capital city, and seven other cities from among the twenty largest cities are named in honour of the builders of empire, then you are a colony.
    If the main streets and parks of your cities are named in honour of the builders of empire, then you are a colony.
    If all your institutions of state are modeled on those of a foreign state, then you are a colony.
    If your fundamental laws are copied from those of a foreign state, then you are a colony.
    If the agents of a foreign state occupy high positions in your military, intelligence, police and civil administration, then you are a colony.
    If your young people need to leave their own country to find fulfillment in life, then you are a colony.
    If your rulers replace the labour of your own people with cheap overseas migrant labour, then you are a colony.
    If you have a social and economic policy of mass immigration, then you are a colony.
    If your “closest traditional allies” are foreign states which previously invaded your lands to suppress a movement for independence, then you are a colony.
    If your most sacred day commemorates the deaths of your own people killed while fighting in defence of a foreign power, then you are a colony.
    If your foreign and domestic policies are kept “in lock step” with a foreign state, then you are a colony.
    If your banks are foreign owned, then you are a colony.
    If your major industries are foreign owned, then you are a colony.
    If your leading food and retail chains are foreign owned, then you are a colony.
    If your economy depends on catering to the needs or whims of foreigners, then you are a colony.
    If your produce sells for higher prices in the domestic market than in foreign markets, then you are a colony.
    If many of your farms and homes are owned by foreigners, then you are a colony.

    2. Geoff your intellect is wasted on here and most certainly on Bob the first who continues to scribe at a 5 year old level.

  10. The world is changing. I saw the first signs of a Maori renaissance in the 70s at Uni, then Dame Whinas hikoi, and Bastion Point. We are no longer a pakeha monoculture. What is happening is that we are becoming a nation, one people, many peoples. I’d ask all those stale old parliamentarians to wake up and smell the coffee. Aotearoa is going ahead, they are welcome to join.

    1. Yes the majority of people in NZ may well be brown when you consider Maori are 20% then there are the pacific peoples ,Africans,and Asians .White people are a shrinking demographic hence the panic taking them over .

  11. Someone once told Collins that her eyebrows had a devilish look, and then the wind changed and it became a permanent expression. Still she has tried to ride on Frida Kahlo’s coat-tail to hide her own forked one.

    Brows have been mentioned by Shakespeare in Macbeth ‘brows of grace’… but in modern times caused greater problems.
    /Film https://www.slashfilm.com › 1689480 ›
    studio-executives-tried-cut-spock-star-trek-reason-satanic
    Studio Executives Tried To Cut Spock From Star Trek For An …- /Film Oct29,2024
    The picture straightened Spock’s ears and eyebrows, removing any
    “Devilish” visage from Spock.

    Judith will have to get AI to remodel her – will she have a kind smile, look concerned about people, kind, thoughtful, normal? Gosh if they bring those features forward it won’t be Ms J Collins any more – unrecognisable and untrue to life.

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