Hone Harawira makes us want Helen back
By MICHAEL LAWS - Sunday Star Times
OPINION: It was entirely typical that the Kaitaia hui tasked with deciding Hone Harawira's political future was open only to Maori media. The colour of one's skin determined access and the mainstream media supinely accepted this latest racial snub.
Which is the liberal dilemma this morning: what to do with a Maori MP when he is utterly representative of an anger within Maoridom. An anger that has been allowed to bubble unchallenged, and then subsidised with decades of taxpayer money. An anger that blames all Maoridom's ills upon the cursed colonial invader.
That the Maori Party leadership are similarly flummoxed is rich irony. For they have deliberately inflamed Harawira's supporters and purposefully argued for redress and then privilege. That Harawira took them literally should not surprise.
And let's be clear about this. Hone Harawira is a racist. He loathes the white man and he has no difficulty with expressing that loathing.
And his message is very clear too. If you are Maori, and you are at the bottom of the heap, then it is the direct fault of Pakeha. The concept of personal responsibility is alien. And given that the Maori Party leadership have, in the past, expressed similar sentiments, then they cannot expel the Te Tai Tokerau MP for his real crime.
Instead they have a new excuse. That Hone doesn't accept caucus discipline or a wider responsibility to the party membership. They are not considering his future because he wallowed in a Parisian trough somewhere. Nor that he thinks all white people are motherf-----s.
And yet, politically at least, Hone Harawira is the original tar baby. Everyone remotely connected with him has ended up getting messy also.
First, there is the Maori Party. Their racial divisiveness has been thrown into stark relief: they are a party of race for race. They can no longer be seen as that nice Pita Sharples and cuddly Aunty Tariana. They are a party that harbours a membership that thinks like Hone.
Prime Minister John Key similarly has sticky fingers this morning. Because he has been weak from the get-go. Instead of quickly and forcibly expressing the outrage of a country, he unsuccessfully sought to employ his shooing policeman persona. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
He could and should have called Sharples and Turia into his office and demanded that Harawira go. That there could be no place in, or even near, his government for this kind of hateful politician. And that the coalition was in peril if this did not occur. Indeed his vacillation was underscored by his previous and public refusal to ever work with NZ First party leader Winston Peters.
I'm struggling to remember what heinous act the former foreign affairs minister committed but I think it was something to do with not declaring private donations. Gosh, that's a dreadful crime isn't it? Compared to Harawira bunking to France, siphoning public monies for personal pleasure (though it looks like he'll pay it back); and then dismissing 70% of New Zealand as rapists and racists.
It is also worth noting that the National government doesn't need the Maori Party. Their votes are not required to pass legislation nor survive confidence. And, with a chastened Rodney Hide, they are even less of an imperative.
It may have been an initial gesture of inclusion but coalition was always going to be a fraught and fragile relationship. The Maori Party agenda is always going to be about especial favour for Maori. That is its raison d'etre. Sooner or later that must founder against the simple principles of democracy and accountability.
Similarly, the last vestige of credibility attached to our ridiculous race relations commissioner has deserted Joris de Bres this past week. He is desperate to do nothing despite his office receiving a record number of complaints. He is desperate not to be involved and has opined that this is best dealt with by the Maori Party.
Sadly, we pay this man. With public funds. In a week or so, I'm sure he will travel north and present Hone Harawira with a commendation that he dealt so well with a baying media. De Bres has already earned this government's ire with his deliberate undermining of its stance on Iran – but this is the first opportunity for most Kiwis to view such sickly white liberalism in person.
And yet Hone has resurrected at least two political bystanders. There can be no question Labour leader Phil Goff more accurately portrayed public sentiment than the prime minister – and then received an even greater fillip by being personally attacked by the hateful Harawira. Suddenly, the opposition leader was relevant again.
And Winston Peters reminded us all that he is still alive by climbing into the Maori Party at a Grey Power meeting in Wanganui. Again, he articulated a sentiment that should have been the prime minister's.
But one voice that has been missing this week – and perhaps would have been the strongest – is that of Helen Clark. This was one week when she was missed. One week when her steely outrage would have played so well. And one week when she would have taken the opportunity to hammer Hone hard.
Ah yes, it's been a bad week for the government when you start to nostalgise over Helen.
