JD
OPINION
Instead of twisting our collective knickers too tightly over Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s claims that “We’ve got a Government that is genocidal, ecocide, we know that they are white supremacists… There’s no if, they are,” perhaps we should take a step back and recognise what drives this hyperbole from Te Pāti Māori, of which she is co-leader.
The MPs of TPM, as is true of many others on the left, are at their peak earning capacity whilst they sit in parliament. In the real commercial world they wouldn’t command half of the quarter million dollars per year they receive in salary and perks from the NZ taxpayer.
Consequently their primary objective is to stay in parliament. All other considerations are secondary.
Recognising this, we can readily understand, and even allow ourselves a wry smile about, why TPM spout their race based, separatist rhetoric. It’s just a cynical job-retention exercise.
Believing that all publicity is good publicity and inflammatory words attract attention, Debbie and her mates are just trying to prove to their fellow radicals that they are their one ‘true voice’.
Of course it’s a vanishingly small choir to which they preach, consisting, as it does, of less than 60,000 voters out of an eligible voter population in excess of four million, but that’s never stopped any zealot in the past.
Even though, based on those figures, it’s a sermon that the great majority of Māori don’t care to hear, that doesn’t matter to Debbie – she has her own nest to feather. To hoover up the radical vote and keep her seat in parliament is her only real objective.
Additionally, as has been noted elsewhere, when you base your political relevance on aggressive rhetoric and claims of victimhood, once these are published you must continually escalate their stridency (in order to continue that relevance) and this is what we are seeing from Te Pāti Māori.
The answer, as with all fractious and attention-seeking displays, whether they be tantrums from toddlers or TPM MPs, is to deprive them of oxygen by ignoring them.
The more headlines we give to TPM rhetoric, the more their radicalised, rag-tag band of 60,000 will hear it and the more extreme it will become.
Next time these risible claims surface, instead of throwing up our hands in horror, we should just laugh loudly and ridicule their stupidity until they eventually drown in their own irrelevance.
Then Te Pāti Māori will drown with them.
PS, DEFUND THE MĀORI SEATS.
