OPINION

Heather du Plessis-Allan has a column in yesterday’s paper about how nervous Government ministers are about protests and robust debate. It’s a whole lot of unnecessary hand wringing and tut-tutting if you ask me.

Not everyone in the coalition Government is thrilled about its race relations policies.

New National Party minister Tama Potaka appears uncomfortable.

He was asked six times this week whether he backed the policies or had raised concerns, and every time dodged the question. He let it be known that there are “robust debates”.

If he’s uncomfortable now, he might be in for quite a ride.

This is only week two of the Government and already they’ve faced nationwide protests and a proclamation from King Tuheitia calling a national hui to discuss how to oppose them.

And this is before the new Government has actually done anything much on race relations. 

NZ Herald

They shouldn’t worry; it’s about the only thing the Maori elite are good at: organising protests. Actually doing something is quite another matter.

The real unknown is how much bottle National has for this level of resistance. This is largely not their fight. It is their coalition partners ACT and NZ First who asked for most of the race relations changes.

National clearly wanted to avoid protests like this week’s. That’s why they gave a hard no to ACT’s Treaty principles referendum.

They don’t really have the option of now pulling the pin on the policies they promised in the coalition agreements. But they can put things on the go-slow so they never happen.

Either way, this Government will need to take control of the narrative rather than leaving it to Labour and Te Pati Maori. There is a platform to mount a good argument if they can be bothered.

NZ Herald

National are rarely up for a fight. Sure they talk a big game, but to actually get their knuckles bruised is quite another thing. To answer HDPA, National doesn’t have bottle, more like they have sippy keep cups.

NZ First and ACT are a different story. They welcome a dust up on this topic, because they know what National’s quivering Pavlov’s dogs don’t: that the general public really wants this debate and they are sick to death of woke wombles force feeding us Maori wonderfulness like the proverbial geese getting their livers fattened for foie gras.

The more Te Pati Maori and Labour pursue their race baiting, the higher ACT and NZ First will go in the polls. A vacillating National will suffer accordingly.

We deserve a debate. Labour and their lap dogs never even asked us what we wanted: they just force-fed us their woke agenda.

Newsflash: an election was held recently and the woke agenda was soundly beaten.

The Government needs to spit in the face of protests.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...