Maori

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

Nelson held a referendum on Maori wards for their council. The public voted it down.

A Maori ward for Nelson city has been soundly rejected by voters.

With just 15, 387 votes received by the cutoff at midday today – a 43.4 percent return – there were 12,298 votes against the proposal and 3131 for it.

In percentage terms, 79.41 per cent of the votes counted were against the proposal and 20.22 for.

Len Brown promised he would hold a referendum on Maori wards during his campaign. He should set up a referendum for the 2013 local body elections so we can all have our say on Maori wards.

ᔥ NZ Herald

Hone Harawira says children will die if the government raises prescription charges by a maximum of $0.77 per week (just over $0.10 per day)….rubbish…everyone knows you can feed a child in Africa for just a dollar a day, if Hone thinks kids are going to die because prescription charges are raised by a maximum of $0.77 per week (just over $0.10 per day) then he has rocks in his head.

Of course he says nothing about the appalling record of Maori in the bashing and killing of children. No amount of prescriptions is going to fix that.

Harawira told Radio New Zealand the increase will prove to be lethal.

“Doctors are saying right now that children’s health is being threatened by the price of medicine now. You have to assume that if Government raises that price then children will die as a result of that measure,” Mr Harawira told Morning Report.

“I don’t believe that any Government could be so callous.

Harawira said parents are already not taking their children to the doctor and getting them medicine due to the cost.

“Absolutely I think that these measures, although it is going to be difficult to prove, will lead to children dying, through the inability of their parents to afford the charges for medicine that are being proposed by this National/Maori Party Government.

Harawira accused the Prime Minister of being “bloody blind if he thinks this is not going to impact on poor people”.

“Every price rise impacts poor people in a far greater way than it does people on the kinds of levels of income that him and his mates are on. So yes it is going to hurt every poor person in this country – Maori, Pacific and Pakeha.”

Comment of the Day

I am a bit bemused that Talleys are bad employers yet they are the only Fishing Company who employ only New Zealanders in their sea going fishing operation including 26% Maori whereas the Maori Fishing Companies employ Philipinos or Indonesian.

What does Hone say about this? Or does he still want to ban Talleys?

As the old saying goes, “be careful what you wish for; you might not like it if you get it.”  Never more apposite than for those clowns who regard Hone Harawira as some sort of messiah who are currently  talking about a “separate state” in the far north for them – presumably with Hone as President for Life, like some sort of south seas Mugabe. So how would it work?

Well, first the boundaries, which would become borders with New Zealand. How about a line from Kawakawa north, and then  east to the coast just south of Waitangi, and west from Kawakawa  in a straight line to the coast? Not much point including Paihia and Russell – game fishing boats require a lot of maintenance and  spare parts, and there probably wont be  sufficient foreign exchange  to buy those from New Zealand. But I guess the borders could be open for negotiation. Anything to get rid of the malcontents  I say.

That leaves the happy residents of Honeland with two harbours – the Hokianga, which though pretty treacherous, was one of the earliest routes into New Zealand back in the day, and  the Whangaroa on the east coast which is more navigable.  But with  the Maori being such great seafarers, if the captains of sailing ships could  get over the Hokianga  bar, it should be no problem for the boys in motor powered craft.

But that raises just the first problem. How to pay for petrol and spares? This of course will also be a problem at Kaitaia International Airport – perhaps renamed after Hone’s much loved mother, and kuia to the tribe. Titewhai International has a certain ring to it….But that is probably for the future. For now, transiting through Auckland  en route to international hui might have to do. But then there is the problem of visas  for Hone and his citizens. Having just got rid of them, we might  not be too keen on having them back, even as transit passengers.

So how to pay for all this? There will be the orchards around Kerikeri – the former owners of which will have to be compensated if they don’t wish to stay in Hone’s paradise –  which will provide some cash, but then orchards are also costly to maintain, and require a fair bit of work.  And of course the markets for the produce will be across the border in New Zealand, and there would be very strict border controls to ensure no plant diseases are imported inadvertently from Honeland. We are known for our strict border controls, so no question of non tariff barriers could arise.  And those pesticides can be very costly.

Then there are the 4WD’s and large cars the bros are so keen on.  They make a great sound, but are  very heavy on the gas. And the roads they run on…labour should be no problem because plenty of the boys are just dying for work – except in the forestry industry which can’t get workers up there because of the small matter of drug testing. But that asphalt is very expensive stuff, as are the machines which apply it.

The forests of course would become the national property of Honeland –generous compensation having to be paid to the present owners who are so picky about who they employ.  So timber – eventually – would provide an income…at the cost of what would inevitably be large numbers of serious injuries as workers high on their “sacrament” sliced into their legs when trying to fell the trees.  Although much derided, forestry work is skilled and hard – no job for the stoned and unfit.

Then of course there are computers, cell phones, ipods TV’s and all the other accoutrements of 21^st century society – unless the good residents of Honeland would be content with entertaining themselves as they did pre-European settlement.  Somehow I think kapa haka nights every Saturday just might not satisfy the younger residents of Honeland for long.  They might then resort to other more traditional activities to liven things up…like bloody internecine warfare. But let’s not go there because, thank God, it would no longer be any of our business.

The great advantage of Honeland  for the rest of us of course is that down here in New Zealand we would no longer have to listen to whining about how badly the colonized race had been treated; all such whiners could simply be told “move to Honeland! Enjoy traditional Maori life unpolluted and completely free from the iniquitous white man!”  I am not entirely sure how large scale immigration by iwi  the Ngapuhi once ate and enslaved would go, but no doubt President Hone and his wise council of elders would be able to sort it out.

I  almost forgot electricity. Even assuming hapa haka nights became the dominant form of entertainment, the residents of Honeland would presumably wish to have lights to see the show, and be able to brew a hot cuppa afterwards before retiring to the whare. The Ngawha area may well be capable of fueling a geothermal power station, but then drilling wells is so expensive – a lot of pine trees and kerikeri oranges to drill  and complete half a dozen geothermal wells and the power station atop them.

So there you have it – just a small sample of the problems an independent state of Honeland would entail. Or is the idea that  WE fund it?  Somehow I think  that idea would be considerably less welcome as a use of our taxation dollar than the rise in GST last parliamentary term. So be careful what you wish for lads…we might just grant your wishes!

ᔥ NZ Herald

Where is Stephen McElrea when you need him?

More details have emerged about a new local reality series that delves into the lives of young Maori living their dream on the Gold Coast.

The GC - similar to Jersey Shoreonly not so trashy – follows the nine 20-somethings as they work and party hard with the goal of retiring sometime in their 30s.

No on-screen date has been set but the NZ On Air-funded show starts on TV3 sometime soon.

Though the Mozzies – aka Maori Aussies – play hard in Australia’s “ultimate party town” they are focused on business ventures and building their own personal empires.

They have not forgotten their roots and wear their tattoos proudly, acknowledge their iwi affiliations, and use te reo as well as GC slang.

Cast members include single rugby player Tame Noema, musician DJ Tuini, former X Factor contestants Jade Louise and Nuz, personal trainer Alby Waititi and singer Nate.

Their favourite phrases include “mumsies” (meaning girlfriends), “neff” (friend), “creep on” (scoring girls), “publics” (pubic hair) and “what doing?” (what’s up?).

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

A new book is seriously going to bend some Maori out of shape. I can;t wait for the headlines expressing outrage over this book.

I wonder if the Egyptians had any kaitiakitanga?

Captain James Cook and Abel Tasman could lose their place in history as the first Europeans to reach New Zealand.

A controversial book, To the End of the Earth, claims to contain evidence that Greeks, Spanish and Egyptians settled in New Zealand long before the Maori people.

The 378-page book, to be released this weekend, was co-authored by researchers Maxwell C Hill, Gary Cook and Noel Hilliam.

It shows ancient maps drawn before the birth of Christ, which the authors said detail the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand.

Skeletons, rock carvings, stone buildings and monuments all attest to people of European origin living in New Zealand for centuries before the arrival of Polynesians, they said.

The artefacts include a rock carving of an ancient Greek ship found in Taupo, a stone pillar with an accurate coastal map of New Zealand showing Lake Taupo in its pre-232AD eruption shape, and carvings on rocks at Raglan.

Hill said a huge boulder weighing several tonnes, deeply cut into a huge circular star calendar and marked with what were believed to be figures and rebuses, was the most stunning find.

He said there was also evidence that showed Maui was not the legendary Maori god-explorer, but an actual Egyptian naval navigator, who steered a flotilla of Greek ships to discover new shores, Hill said.

The book quotes Professor Barry Fell, of Harvard University in the US, who interpreted graffiti drawn on limestone in caves at McCluer Bay, on the coast of Indonesia.

Hill said Fell’s find names Maui as a navigator from the Red Sea under the flag of Ptolemy III in 232BC.

A cave inscription near Santiago, Chile also shows the Maori god-explorer was an Egyptian navigator, saying the point was “the southern limit of the coast reached by Maui,” Hill said.

via the tipline

It looks like there is a fair bit of academic racism going on at Waikato University

It appears that Waikato University is doing its best to add to its reputation as New Zealand’s most PC university.

In the last week, Psychology lecturer Dr Linda Nikora was kind enough to inform a lecture room full of keen students that a number of placements would be available in the clinical psychology programme.

One little catch though. Dr Nikora is proposing that the limited places are restricted to Maori only as she does not believe any Pakeha are culturally competent to deal with Maori health issues. She then advised the students that she will be presenting on this issue to an upcoming conference in a bid to ensure Maori only treat Maori.

Only at Waikato!

Some academic says that we are all wrong in thinking that child abuse is a cultural issue:

More and more New Zealanders believe child abuse is a cultural issue despite statistics showing that abuse does not discriminate between cultures, a social work lecturer says.

Raema Merchant, a social work lecturer at the Eastern Institute of Technology, said it was unclear how the public had developed a perception that it was a Maori issue.

Her masters thesis at Massey University found about half of the children killed in New Zealand died at the hands of a Pakeha abuser.

Almost 9000 children were victims of physical abuse between 2000 and 2008, yet only 21 became “household names” in the media, she said.

Just one-third of child deaths were reported in the press, and they were predominantly Maori cases.

“Where are they getting it from? Child abuse is not a cultural issue.”

Raema Merchant though doesn’t tell us the full picture…she only tells us the statistics that suit her twist to the tale of New Zealand’s appalling child abuse statistics.

If she was right that it isn’t cultural then we should see figures that roughly equal the population mix. We are not…however she only told us the European statistics and so about the only thing we can work out from the statistics is that Eurpeans are far less likely than others to abuse their children.

Interestingly this article is almost a word for word re-hash of an article by Kate Chapman and Dana Levy nearly a year ago. And that article tells a disctinctly different picture where it shows that:

New research by Eastern Institute of Technology social work lecturer Raema Merchant found Pakeha kill as many of their children as Maori, although Maori were the “face of abuse” in the media.

Maori make up 14.6% of the population but kill and abuse their kids at the same rates and everyone else. The split is about 50/50. Her research clearly shows that child abuse most certainly is a cultural issue with Maori hugely more likely than everyone else to kill or abuse their children.

Today’s article is sloppy repeating.

We all know that David Cunliffe is a racist, he proved that with his little speech during the election, where he put on an affected Pasefika accent. Now we have more proof, this time from inside parliament.

During the debate on the Search and Surveillance Bill, he was speaking when Simon Bridges heckled him:

Simon Bridges: You’d be complaining.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The perma-tanned member opposite argues that this is a legitimate power of Government, but he flies in the face of the fact that 90 percent of New Zealanders would say that when only one in five burglaries is being closed by our boys and girls in blue—

Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I do not think it is appropriate for a member of this Committee to refer to a member who happens to be Māori as “perma-tanned”, and frankly I think it is offensive.

This is the man that the membership wants as leader of the Labour party. A bigot.

David Cunliffe says it wasn’t racist but I can think of no other reason for him to say what he said other than as a racist slur.

Matthew Hooton responds to Hone Harawira’s attack on Paul Holmes:

Notably, the criticism of Mr Holmes was more for his tone than his message.

The exception was veteran hothead Hone Harawira who took to his keyboard to bash out a response nearly as vitriolic as Mr Holmes’ original but hilariously revealing that Mr Holmes had a point.

Mr Holmes, Mr Harawira said, was “mean and nasty”; “offensive and uncaring.”

Many Maori hadn’t really wanted to sign the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, worrying that the British couldn’t be trusted and “just wanted to steal our land.”

The treaty opponents also wanted to stop “untrustworthy pakeha traders from pushing gut-rot alcohol into Maori communities” and make “dirty, stinking, pakeha whalers, sailors, thieves and brigands wash more than three times a year.”

The early Europeans also mistreated Maori children, “telling them to shut up, hitting them.”

Mr Harawira acknowledged that pre-European New Zealand “wasn’t exactly a bunch of roses,” but Maori had “strong and vibrant societies … until you guys introduced the gun, the Bible and the pox, and wreaked havoc and devastation like we’d never seen before.”

Despite all this, Mr Harawira tells us, Maori signed the treaty anyway.

It was all downhill for Maori since then according to the rent a mob.

Nothing improved.“In terms of health, welfare, education, employment, housing and justice,” he wrote, “Maori statistics are still worse than everyone else in the country. There’s not a lot to make Maori want to smile and clap.”

Mr Harawira is to be commended for clarifying the message of the Waitangi rent-a-mob.

Thanks to him, we now understand that the influence of Europeans on New Zealand has been almost entirely negative. It is their fault Maori are unhealthy, fail at school, don’t have jobs or houses and get sent to jail.

It’s only because of pakeha that Maori kids get ignored and beaten up.

Yep It’s all our fault. The effects of colonisation were truly horrible:

It is true that European colonisation was deeply traumatic when it occurred on every continent in the second half of the second millennium.People were killed directly or because of exotic diseases.Land was stolen. Everyone experienced profound culture shock.

But it’s also true that the process led to a hitherto unimaginable improvement in living standards everywhere in the world as people traded, learned from one another and exchanged technologies and ideas.

All New Zealanders, Maori and pakeha, whether rich or poor by contemporary standards, enjoy a material standard of living far superior to the vast majority of people living in the world today and certainly in the top fraction of a percent of all the people who have ever lived.

Even as New Zealand slips from first world to second, future generations of New Zealanders will enjoy material comforts superior to anything imaginable today.

It is possible – and, if Mr Harwira’s ideas pollute another few generations, even probable – that Maori will continue, on average, to enjoy a lower standard of living than other New Zealanders.

The fading impact of colonisation will be one factor but far more important will be the loser attitudes that people like Mr Harawira spread among their young.

Yes, we are constantly told about those ideas and attitudes and how they will solve all ills:

Ideas like holding up one social structure that evolved in a stone-age environment in two islands in the South Pacific as a model for the future.

Ideas like the primacy of whakapapa, which says that the value of an individual is driven by who their ancestors were – a concept some contemporary Maori leaders are coming to regard as fitting better in feudal England than in a vibrant South Pacific nation in the 21st century.

Ideas like diluting the responsibility for child-rearing among a wider group than holding parents to be primarily responsible for the welfare of their children.

Ideas like poorly-defined tribal ownership of property.

Ideas like saying an individual’s health, housing or education status is determined by what Governor Hobson did in 1840, and what promises may have subsequently been broken.

Individual Maori, of course, may live anyway they want.

But people who focus on events over the last 200 years rather than the next 20 years, who prefer feudalism and collectivism to individualism and meritocracy, and enjoy protesting more than working, have to accept they will tend to be poorer, sicker and dumber than everyone else.

I suspect Matthew Hooton is lucky this was published in the NBR and not somewhere with a great deal more readership.