"Who’s really playing the race card, Pita Sharples?
Colin Espiner in On The House | 1:31 pm 29 October 2007

It’s been a considerable while since I’ve last been able to say this, but Winston Peters is absolutely right.

The New Zealand First leader used his platform at last weekend’s annual conference to lash out at the Maori Party for inciting racial hatred over the police raids on Maori (but mostly non-Maori) activists a couple of weeks ago.

“New Zealanders are sick and tired of being called racists by those who are clearly the most militant racists in the country,” Peters said.

“New Zealanders wonder why a political party based solely on race is held up as the moral compass for the country. In South Africa, we called that apartheid.”

OK, there’s a little hyperbole in here. But Peters’ central point is that anyone who either says or does anything that impacts on the tangata whenua must, according to the Maori Party, be motivated by racism - rather than, say, dislike of their actions or, in the case of the police, a belief that they broke the law.

So, says the Maori Party, the police must be racist. I haven’t heard anyone accuse the cops of being anti-Pakeha, however. Anti-activist, yes. Authoritarian, heavy-handed, and even stupid. But criticism from Pakeha upset at the way the police raids were conducted has mostly centred on the actions of those involved, rather than ascribing some racial motive.

That, as Peters correctly points out, is racism - and it makes a mockery of Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples’ claim that Peters is “playing the race card”. Sharples has been playing that one for all it’s worth for weeks, even claiming that the raids “set back race relations by 100 years”.

Sharples followed this up at the weekend with the preposterous claim that somehow the Government was behind the arrest of Tame Iti. “There is no way the Government is going to let Tame Iti free … they’re getting back at him now,” he said.

Of course. This entire police operation was orchestrated by the Government so that it could extract revenge for Iti shooting a New Zealand flag two years ago. This is the kind of delusional paranoia indulged in by conspiracy theorists who think the New York terrorism attacks were staged by the US Government. They do Sharples, the thinking man’s radical, no honour at all.

Sharples and the party’s other MPs seem to believe that it is impossible anyone who is Maori could be guilty of terrorism because of their ethnicity. This, too, is racist. It’s arguing that one race is superior to another. I haven’t heard Sharples defending any other ethnicity involved in the raids.

Has the Maori Party gone too far? It depends. Some of its core constituency - those that harbour a grudge towards non-Maori and still believe colonisation to be on a par with the Holocaust - will doubtless applaud the sentiments. But more conservative Maori, who don’t necessarily want their children growing up hating the police and anyone who isn’t brown, may be alarmed.

Criticising the impact the raids had on ordinary Tuhoe people was one thing. Questioning whether they could have been conducted in a more civilised manner was equally fair enough. But some of the invective spat in Parliament by Hone Harawira and Te Ururoa Flavell has been downright dangerous. If a non-Maori MP accused the police of racism for arresting a white supremacist they would be rightly pilloried. Again, however, it seems different standards apply to Maori.

Veteran activist John Minto reckons Peters’ invective was “spittle-flecked dog whistling”. It’s a nice turn of phrase and Minto is probably right, to an extent. Peters had one eye firmly fixed on his party’s abysmal poll ratings when he made his speech. He is hoping to tap into a vein of middle-class anger at the way the Maori Party has hijacked this debate.

It could well be a fertile source. Peters is voicing the feelings of both Labour and National, but neither big party can afford to get caught up in such a debate. The question is how well he can manage it. Peters has a bit of form as a stirrer of racial tensions himself.

He must be careful not to end up looking as if he is Maori-bashing himself, and inadvertently whistling up the sort of mongrels that may reflect poorly on his status as an elder statesman of Parliament and Foreign Minister. Properly handled, however, Peters could yet sink his teeth into some of the softer Maori Party vote and pick up some lost ground in the centre as well."