Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer wrote a rip-snorter for the Herald on Wednesday.
She neatly explained how she divides New Zealanders into three groups: (1) tangata of the whenua (people of the land), (2) tangata of the tiriti (people of the treaty), and (3) people like me who disagree with her.
She leaves no room for doubt that her schema is hierarchical. The people of the land were first and had no need for the treaty. The people of the treaty need the treaty, recognise treaty partnership and are "comfortable loudly declaring they're recovering racists".
These people "stood side by side with us fighting for Māori wards" and other causes dear to the Māori Party.
The rest of us by implication are non-recovering racists.
She says treaty people report "the violence of white supremacists who are scared of what Māori will do if the balance of power tilts".
I am a “one person, one vote” guy that wants the law blind to skin colour. I am fearful of the balance of power shifting in favour of one race over another. It’s unclear whether for Ms Ngarewa-Packer that makes me a “white supremacist” but clearly she has me down as a “non-recovering racist” which is at least next door.
In her schema all non Māori are racist with her distinction being those who are recovering and those who are not.
Ms Ngarewa-Packer tells us she is "excited as heck" because as she sees it tangata whenua and tangata tiriti are uniting as a nation while "everyone else is being left in the past".
Maybe. Maybe not.
The New Zealand Herald published the following after her opinion piece:
“Kia ora,
After attempting to moderate this post, the NZ Herald social team has decided to disable comments. Racism will not be tolerated on this page. We understand that this is frustrating that whenever we share the opinions of Māori, we get bombarded with racist comments.”
What's not clear is whether there's a lot of racism or just a lot of people who disagree with Ms Ngarewa-Packer.
What a stirrer this woman is, she likes to make these weird statements to try to get under our skin, mostly paler than hers I guess but then I was thinking about who she really is. Debbie, doesn't sound very Maori to me, reminds me more of Debbie Reynolds, that cute, now sadly passed American actress or perhaps she was named after that lead singer from Blondie, Debbie Harry. now that would be ironical wouldn't it! But she likes to be proper, so I am guessing the non-Maori sounding Debbie was named after the more formal Deborah, as in Kerr, the famous British actress? Ngarewa, now that definitely sounds Maori, but remembering she likes to stir things up, she hyphenated…
From what I can see by looking at her photo, she's obviously not a full blooded Maori. So, does the other percentage of non-Maori blood in her automatically make her a racist? It gets quite confusing.
Bet she hates looking at herself in the mirror every morning!
This woman is deranged, and is absolutely not fit for Parliament. Shame on the NZ Herald for giving her the time of day.
Thanks Rodney,
Just how credible is this racist s**t-stirrer?
Look at her track record. She stated in parliament that she was from a people who had been victims of a "holocaust and genocide" at the hands of the government of New Zealand.
That was a total lie.
There never was a holocaust, which is a mass racist massacre, using purpose built mass slaughter houses using cyanide gas to exterminate an entire race of people.
So nicely put, Rodney. Clearly, Mrs Ngarewa-Packer levels a charge of racism because she's unable to counter the charge of anti-democracy levelled at her and her party and introduces a note of malice where none existed. She is deliberately blind to the loss of freedoms she and her party are introducing. Thank you for putting into words what so many of us are unable to. Your stinging conclusion is priceless.
Good morning! Well totally off topic here but I have just watched the recent media interview with Judith Collins. What a disgrace! It is pretty clear that our "bought and paid for media" are only interested in "Treaty Partnership and all things Maori" to the exclusion of everything else. What a travesty! Nothing else matters to them. Not the budget, her views on the way forward or anything else of importance to New Zealanders. They were like an angry pack of wolves.
I think it's time for action folks. A NZ newspaper and NZ free tv day. As many people as possible don't buy a paper or watch NZ tv. It's pretty easy really. I do it already, Can w…