OPINION
The Maori Party MPs are once again showing their petulance, contempt and childish behaviour for anything that they don’t like. They’re throwing their taonga takaros (toys) out of the moenga (cot). They have made it very clear that they are going to try and make the Guinness Book of Records for ‘Spitting the Most Dummies in a Parliamentary Term’. What they would like to achieve is akin to ‘Mission Implausible’. These people are nothing more than a stain on our democracy and our system of government.
The fact they don’t like either is evidence of their hatred for anything that doesn’t suit their belief that 17 per cent of the population (just over 900,000) should dictate to the other 4+ million how the country is run.
To get a clearer picture we need to take the numbers of Maori of voting age who would be entitled to have a say on the matter. That number is 443,000. To get an even more accurate picture we need to look at how many Maori voted for the Maori Party at the election, precisely 86,834.
That is a stark reality. Of the 2,894,468 million who voted at the election only 3 per cent voted for the Maori Party, just enough to fill Eden Park, Mt Smart Stadium and Spark Arena. Based on those numbers these people barely have the right to organise and run a bring and buy stall (if they did, it would no doubt run at a loss), never mind the country. Their ethnicity has no bearing on their supposed influence over how this country is run in 2023. Just because they debatably got here first is meaningless in today’s world.
These people are fringe lunatics trying to sound like they have the right to fundamentally change and remove the foundations on which this country was built. Their rhetoric, particularly that of Debbie Ngawera Packer, is bordering on the insane. Simply put, the majority of the population won’t buy into it and she will be exposed for what she really is: a racist activist. She has nothing worthwhile to contribute to the country or her people including the minuscule three per cent who voted for her party.
If the Maori Party are in Parliament for the good of their people they need to change their direction of travel. Getting a small minority of their people wandering the streets with their flags and placards is not going to put one more slice of bread on the table. Swearing allegiance to their mokopuna and the Treaty does no more than give those involved some misguided sense of satisfaction. It doesn’t cut it any more than the loaf of bread many of their people are struggling to afford.
The Maori Party need to realise that the best way to get wins is to join the game. Barracking from the sidelines is not the answer. Engaging in constant opposition in the mistaken belief that somehow that is their job is a forlorn strategy. Where were their hooting and hollering when the stats for Maori were worsening under their friends in Labour? There was none because that’s not their core interest.
Their core interest is language, names on buildings and interfering with the Treaty.
None of those things will help the plight of their people, the majority of whom are trying to get ahead like the rest of the population. Instead of acting like a bunch of rabid activists they would be better off behaving like normal human beings and opening up a dialogue with the Government on how best to go about helping their people. This is what this Government wants to do but the Maori Party isn’t interested.
There is no doubt things will improve for Maori under a National Government, as has historically been the case, but don’t expect any acknowledgment or thanks from the indigenous circus that is the Maori Party. These clowns are not there for that reason. The reason they are there is to push their racist rhetoric and policies down everyone else’s throats. They are determined to show the vast majority of the population who don’t want a bar of them what racism looks like. In three years’ time and for the foreseeable future (thankfully), that should guarantee there will be no chance of electing another left-wing Government.