Driving from the Hutt Valley to Wellington on Friday afternoon, I was listening, as usual, to Newstalk ZB. It wasn’t the usual Bro Show (Phil Gifford and Simon Barnett); instead we had Tim Roxborogh. I have often found Roxborogh to be a bit left-leaning for my taste, but each to his own.
Among the topics being discussed was Shane Jones’s blatant pork barrel promise of $100 million to upgrade maraes around the country, including a few — surprise, surprise — in Northland. Judith Collins stopped just short of calling this move corruption, as voting has already started, and such promises are absolute election bribes and nothing else. Roxborogh wasn’t particularly outraged by this proposal, unlike many other commentators. His reasoning became clear.
A Maori man came on the programme and started to express his disdain at the proposal. He said that giving all this money to Maori must stop. He struggled at times to get his point across, but basically he was trying to say that it is time for us to move forward as one nation, and for governments to stop throwing money at Maori because it is divisive and racist.
Wow. Many of us think this way, but are afraid to say it out loud. This man just did. I could hear a collective cheer going on in the homes of many New Zealanders, all of whom supported Treaty settlements in the early days, but are now frustrated and disillusioned that, over 30 years on, we are no closer to the end of this process than we were at the start. It is time to stop it all, and it is heartening to hear a Maori man say so himself.
Sadly, Roxborogh didn’t agree.
I realise that Roxborogh needs to be careful what he says on air, not wishing to antagonise people who disagree with him, but strangely, that does not stop him from voicing his opinion on other matters. It didn’t stop him from voicing his opinion in this case either. Roxborogh referred to a situation ‘a couple of decades ago’ (being presumably around the year 2000) when a Maori associate of his felt unable to go to a particular pub because it was unofficially recognised as unwelcoming to Maori… and then he did a quick comparison with the apartheid situation in South Africa, effectively saying that, around the year 2000, New Zealand was as actively racist as South Africa had been in the height of its apartheid era.
What an absolute load of bollocks.
Does Roxborogh not remember the Springbok tour of 1981 when huge crowds of New Zealanders were so anti-apartheid we had riots in the streets and rugby fans boycotted the games? If that was not in support of our Maori players, then please tell me what that was all about? This was approximately 20 years before the time that Roxborogh claims Maoris weren’t allowed in certain pubs. Such behaviour was eradicated a long time ago.
He then went on to talk about soldiers coming back from World War 1, pointing out that white soldiers were given land and Maori soldiers weren’t. This is true, but it is 100 years ago. Is he trying to say that nothing has changed in 100 years? Well, 30 years of Treaty settlements would make a lie out of that: a lie that Roxborogh appears to studiously ignore.
I want nothing more than to see New Zealand move forward as a nation, with people of all creeds and colours calling themselves New Zealanders and all making equal contributions to this beautiful place that we call home.
Sadly, so long as we have people such as Tim Roxborogh on the airwaves, calling up grievances of the past, we will never move forward as a nation. We will be caught in the mire of resentment forever.
And we were all blaming Maori for not being able to move forward. It seems that it is not only Maori who are stuck in a time warp. In fact, some of them are not stuck at all.
Good on the man who called it out. It is time to look forward, not back.
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