We travelled back to Wellington on Sunday, amid sunny skies and a very full ferry. My husband has a lifelong habit of listening to RNZ. Never mind. Each to his own. But it is possible that Red Radio will be able to do for me something that I have not been able to do for myself, and that is get him to change to another station. Why? Because, these days, we understand less and less of what is broadcast on there.
What am I referring to? Well, as we drove home, there was a programme on about Maori music, specifically Maori composers. I don’t think we are talking about the likes of Vivaldi, Rossini or Tchaikovsky, but nevertheless, there are many Maori composers who have graced the airwaves with their “musicality”. (That is a quote.) From what I can tell, there are more waiatas than symphonies, but again, each to their own.
Except for one thing. The programme, while ostensibly conducted in English (it was all talk and not much music) was undecipherable. Anyone who did not speak Maori would not have understood a word of it.
This is our national radio station, funded by NZ on Air.
Ever since Maori Language Week a couple of weeks ago, we seem to have much more Maori on the TV and radio – the free-to-air stuff anyway. The TV1 News is peppered with a lot more Maori phrases which I freely admit are completely lost on me, but it doesn’t usually take away the meaning of the news item. This article on RNZ was different. It was at least 50% Maori.
So what is happening?
If you want to learn a language, you have to study it. Total immersion might work, but of course, this is not total immersion. It is too easy to just turn the radio off. RNZ won’t care, of course – they are publicly funded. But we should all care; we should care a lot. This is indoctrination at its very finest.
And most of us will grumble, turn off the radio or TV, but we won’t do much else. We are too scared to speak up and complain about the Maori dominance in all our free-to-air media because we do not want to be seen as racist.
Well, I freely state that I am not a racist, but I strongly object to not being able to understand whole programmes on publicly funded media in an English speaking country.
I have no problem with the Maori channel. I even watch it sometimes. They use a lot more Maori on their programmes, but there is also an element of teaching, for those who want to learn. Personally, I speak a bit of French a bit of German and a smattering of Spanish, so if I was going to concentrate on my language skills, I would probably work on those. I just can’t see the point in starting to learn a new language that I can speak badly. But again, each to his own. If you want to speak Maori, go for it. Personally, I don’t.
Do you not think there is a large amount of manipulation going on here, from politicians to an ever more woke media? From the constant use of Aotearoa, which is not our country’s name, to the increased amount of Maori words found everywhere, we are being manipulated, and I don’t like it.
I am beginning to understand how the people of Cornwall felt, or the Welsh, who felt that their language was dying out and they took steps to maintain it. The same could be said of Maori too, I suppose, but it is not necessarily Maori who are pushing this particular bandwagon. And this is completely different, because English is the most widely spoken language in the world… and yet politicians and the media seem determined to drive it out of our country. What madness is this?
Most of us just fume and stay silent, but we all should know that appeasement never works. This problem will not go away if we ignore it. We have already seen the demands for more exposure increase exponentially over the past few years, and it isn’t over yet. Now we have the most militant Maori party leaders ever, with John Tamihere jumping on the separatist gravy train, hoping to get more and more money for fewer and fewer people. The demands are never going to stop. They just get louder, more vociferous and more belligerent if their demands are not met. These people are a small minority, yet the politicians and the media, in a combination of appeasement and promotion, push the barrow as far as it will go.
What do we do? Well, the vast majority of New Zealanders do not want this radical extremism, but we tolerate it nonetheless. Yes, we can turn off the radio and TV, but we are paying for it, remember. These organisations are state-funded; they don’t have to please their viewers. They get to please themselves, in the great re-education of the people of Aotearoa.
Shall we try boycotting the woke companies? Good luck with that. Remember what happened when a Vodafone customer said he didn’t want to work with ‘Vodafone Aotearoa’ (a company that does not exist) and said he was going elsewhere. Spark and 2 Degrees both piped up and said they supported Vodafone’s approach to cultural Maoridom. So, most of us are stuck with it… unless we want to forego the use of the telephone and the internet. The great re-education has a long reach.
I don’t know what to do, but I’ll tell you what. I’m not taking this re-education lying down.
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