Maori Party Racism

The Mask is Slipping

An ideology of racism, implicit in the very existence of the Maori party, is now starting to become more overt. The more Hone Harawira opens his mouth, the more deeply he rams both his feet down his throat. Well, actually, that's not true. The more he speaks, the more the veneer of genuine participation in the political process is stripped away and we are left with the naked evil of a race which believes it "deserves" special treatment.

Such beliefs have always bubbled just beneath the surface of the Maori Party. They spurt forth occasionally like a Rotorua steam vent, but generally they hiss just beneath. Co-leader Tariana Turia has gone on record saying that the coming of the Pakeha to New Zealand represented a holocaust for Maori people. She has blamed high Maori crime, multi-generational welfare dependency, low education standards, poverty and everything else bad about Maori upon pakeha colonisation.

She apparently does not realise what a low view of Maori she is actually reflecting. If we were Maori, we would take a page out of the Hone Harawira playbook and call for Mrs Turia to be put up against a wall and shot. By whining about the past, as she has done, she conveys the impression that Maori have no mana, are pathetic, and are self-subjugated. After all, peoples like the Scots and the Irish suffered far more under British colonisation than the Maori ever did yet they never allowed themselves to believe they were so inferior. In fact, those two oppressed and colonised peoples have engaged in a vigorous diaspora which has shaped the entire modern world.

If Turia really respected her people she would be saying, "harden up, get a life, take responsibility--it's your fault if you don't." That is true respect. the "Woe is us, woe is us" and "It's the pakeha's fault" is a pathetic nonsense that shows a profound disrespect for Maori. And it is not just Mrs Turia. Pita Sharples, Turia's co-leader was urging gang members recently to pull together, because there were plenty of other non-brown enemies to fight. His mana, too, is declining the more he speaks along these lines. The real enemy is apparently whitey.

Hone Harawira has simply become a more strident and overt face of Turia's soft-racism and racial self-loathing. The Maori Party's soft racism is hardening under his influence.

Harawira may well turn out to be the real leader of the party, or at least the guardian of party ideology. He appears to represent a large section of party members and supporters--although, thankfully, not all. His ideology and racism goes a step further than that of Turia and Sharples. They operate on the premise that Maori have been unjustly exploited, yet are prepared to play by whitey's rules to get compensation and restitution. Harawira takes the view that because (in his mind) Maori have been unjustly exploited and stolen from for centuries they are justified in rejecting whitey's rules and asserting their own.

Consider carefully the following statement by Harawira when he was offering his Clayton's apologies:

I suspect if I had said something like European colonisers have been responsible for the loss of 63 million acres of Maori land over the past 150 years and it is inappropriate that you should be holding me to the standards set by people with such little regard for Maori land and Maori custom it wouldn’t have rated a mention in the media.

Harawira is implying that he does not need to be held to the same standards at whiteys because their standards are those of thieves. So, if whitey, applying whitey rules, judge him as stealing from the taxpayer by going on a private pleasure jaunt to Paris at the taxpayer's expense, it is irrelevant. Whitey's rules do not apply to him. Whitey is a thief.

We can debate whether whitey is a thief or not, just as we can Maori Party disrespect for Maori. But Harawira's ideology is of another order. Who would trust him now? Is he a man of honour? Does his word count? Can we trust his assurances or his oaths? Would we do business with him? Would we trust his signature on a contract? When he entered Parliament, he took oaths and vows. Now he would throw it all out as irrelevant because it is just whitey's rules which continue to rip Maori off.

Harawira is nothing more nor less than a dishonest, two faced, deceitful liar. He has taken oaths and vows as a Member of our Parliament to comply with its rules. When it suits him, he lies to his party leaders, steals from the people, and attempts to justify it by saying that the white man's rules don't apply to him. Harawira has done more to shame and dishonour Maori by his actions and words--far more than Turia or Sharples ever have done. For who, now, would ever trust the word of a Maori?

There is one way to redeem this situation--and one way only. It is for the Maori Party to reject Harawira and say, thereby, that such hubris, deceit, and double-dealing is not representative of Maori in general, nor the Maori Party in particular. But we are certain that it will never happen. Pita Sharples has already gone on record saying that brown people fighting amongst themselves is not tolerable. The Maori Party's tent is exceedingly broad, and soft-racism can cover a multitude of sins.