LABOUR’S SHAKESPEARE MOMENT
- Michael Bassett
- Oct 19, 2022
- 2 min read
As a former Labour Minister of Arts and Culture I was shocked to hear that the Arts Council had decided to remove the annual subsidy to the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival for secondary school students. The sum of money involved ($31,000) isn’t massive. But the decision to cut the subsidy hits at a very significant secondary school cultural festival. The second biggest secondary school in the country, Mt Albert Grammar School, smack in the middle of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s electorate, has performed very well at these Sheilah Winn competitions, with several students, winning scholarships including recently an African international student at the school. The reasons advanced by Creative New Zealand for abolishing the grant related to some weird notion that Shakespeare is part of imperialism; that New Zealand should be “de-colonised”, and presumably that all students should be force-fed kapa haka and Te Ao Maori instead.
The decision was taken by a team that Jacinda Ardern’s government appointed. Their appointments were approved by her caucus of 65 Labour MPs. Each of those MPs claims to uphold Labour Party traditions when they clearly don’t. Peter Fraser, one of the founders of the Labour Party, established state funding for arts and culture, and was, himself, an enthusiastic devotee of Shakespeare. In 1948, as Prime Minister, he made a special trip to Auckland to see Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Fraser knew his Shakespeare and would often choose a relevant quote when speaking in Parliament.
It’s important that those destructive government appointees to Creative New Zealand should be identified so that their contempt for New Zealand’s wider heritage, no matter which of the cultures represented in modern New Zealand he/she comes from, can be known. They are cultural vandals. Did any of them understand that in modern New Zealand, the Arts gain strength from their diverse origins, that “cancel culture” is no culture at all? Apparently not. If any of the named opposed the final decision, he or she should have the courage to stand up and tell us, or forever live with a black spot beside their names.
The Arts Council Board website shows the membership: The dates are when the person’s term expires.
Caren Rangi (Chair) [November 2024]
Michael Prentice (Deputy Chair) [November 2024]
Roger King [September 2022]
Garth Gallaway [April 2023]
Janine Morrell-Gunn [September 2022]
Riria Hotere-Barnes [September 2022]
John Ong [September 2022]
Robyn Hunt [November 2023]
Kura Moeahu [November 2023]
Ane Tonga [November 2024]
Hilary Poole [November 2024]
Bonita Bigham [July 2025]
Whetu Fala [June 2025]
The Chief Executive of the New Zealand Arts Council who has made inflammatory comments is Stephen Wainwright
Diabolical.
Take away $31k from schools and give $2.75m to the mongrel mob for drug rehab.
Go figure.
😡
Arts council and minister 🤡💤💩
I'm learning te reo. And, yes, the Maori language and culture does have a place in New Zealand. I'm learning it because I want to, and am paying for the course myself.
However.
New Zealand Europeans bought their own culture to New Zealand, that had so many benefits to Maori, that they still use today.
People like Willie Jackson make me fucking angry. Europeans, that have made , for the most part New Zealand what it is, a first world country, DO HAVE A CULTURE. they brought it with them.
And don't feed me that " we were here first" bullshit.
Who the hell cares?
The Maori language is beautiful, but when spoken only in Maori. Not te fucking manglis…
Sad to say just checked their website and their givealittle website, I hope they crash and burn. They are being canceled by their own.
i was having a chat with my neighbour about a week ago. he is maori. we talked about 'culture'. he asked me what i missed most about not living in europe. told him i miss the "culture" in europe: concerts, musea, literature, art (in general).
he, quite surprisingly (to me) agreed. told me:
- his ancestors did not have a written language (fact)
- his ancestors had no musical instruments other than hollowed out tree-stumps (fact)
- his ancestors could sing, but that was more like "boring" chanting to, possibly, mythical predecessors, like kupe et al (fact)
- his ancestors did not even adorn their caves / flax huts with paintings (fact)
his one and only positive about his (maori)…
At the same time as being Maori cultural/ethnic narcissists, it's impossible to avoid the fact that there is another clear (and directly contradictory) component to an ideology that seeks to ban or diminish someone like Shakespeare: extreme envy. They don't want to ban him because he is "bad" they want to ban him because he is too good. He makes them look bad. It irks them that Maori culture could not give rise to a Shakespeare (or even writing).
It is very difficult to repudiate a people and a culture when the evidence that they were exceptional is all around for anyone to see. Only ethnic Europeans could have achieved the heights of European civilisation, and they know this full…