Stuff's Joel Maxwell. Photo / Stuff
By Joel Maxwell, Stuff
Joel Maxwell is a senior writer with Stuff's Pou Tiaki team.
OPINION: So for decades we tried to fit in, be good: we stripped ourselves of what made us unique and powerful, and – shorn of our feathers – we nearly became nothing. No longer ourselves, but certainly never fully like them either.
Māori will always be dogs to a certain kind of person – so it’s not surprising those people get outraged at having to share anything, let alone power. We weren’t even allowed to stand in general electorates till 1967.
It’s now 2023 and anti co-governance hui across the South Island have spat out a bunch of candid clips, shared into social media and news, aiming to reveal the nature of the meetings. The first one I watched was the worst. But they’re all bad, just differently.
Stop Co-Governance roadshow organiser Julian Batchelor. Photo / Peter De Graaf / Northern Advocate
Filmmaker Keelan Walker, was shut out of a meeting in Blenheim because he was, in the words of organiser Julian Batchelor, not a “good Māori”. Batchelor says on camera: “Somebody who will sit there and be respectful all the way through and listen, that’s a good Māori.”
Seriously, if you want to understand what it feels like for me to hear that then imagine Batchelor stopping you at the door and asking, in that dreamy voice: Are you a good respectful woman? Are you a good respectful Indian? Are you a good respectful Muslim?
They all seem outrageous, and I could go on. To be honest the only groups that it doesn’t hit at a visceral level are men and Pākehā and that in a nutshell is why there isn’t any racism against white people, and sexism against men. It just doesn’t work here, folks.
I’m not going to cry or anything, but hearing the video did cause me visceral pain. For decades Māori were urbanised, assimilated – convinced we needed to be more like Pākehā – separated from our culture and language, which was all a lie because in the end it was all about training us to be good.
Invercargill mayor Nobby Clark refuses to bastardise the “European language”. File photo / Stuff
And as for the meetings. Every minute of video I watched aged me a year. If it wasn’t having to hear Batchelor talk about civil war with a rhetorical shrug of the shoulders, then it was the supportive words of Invercargill mayor Nobby Clark, who doesn’t believe in the bastardisation of the European language (English?) so refuses to mix it with te reo.
Clark seems to be part of the recent Miserable Mayor phenomenon – a cadre, a taskforce if you will, of men around the country who have switched to civic leadership out of a sense of personal injustice, backache and the fact nobody wants to listen to them moaning at the pub.
These are talkback callers disguised in mayoral chains. Some of them are unhappy at having to hear karakia at meetings, others come out and diss their own council table colleagues and staff.
They all seem to mistake their, frankly, cushy six-figure job and corner office with oppression.
Joel Maxwell: “I’m not going to cry or anything, but hearing the video did cause me visceral pain.” Photo / Stuff
If I were a ratepayer in Invercargill I would be worried about this guy in charge, who as seen on video in the local meeting seems to genuinely believe the Government and national media worked in cahoots to suppress his writings on co-governance. I can truthfully tell Clark that the Beehive didn’t order me to write this – I find his beliefs weird and disturbing all on my own, thanks.
Co-governance has been trashed as divisive by some: To me, it means I have to suffer through painful, insulting rhetoric from people who love division, people who profess ignorance as pure and untainted as Clark’s European language.
Let’s be clear, co-governance isn’t divisive, being racist is divisive.