Saturday, August 22, 2009

NZ Herald makes stuff up

Today's NZ Herald op-ed about the proposed reserved Maori seats today contains a lie;

Ever since the rush-of-blood decision to exclude Maori, Mr Key has, quite correctly, been seeking to fashion a compromise.

Maori are not excluded just because reserved seats are not allocated.

Hell, it's not even as if they had reserved seats and their removal has been proposed.

Why has this business become so convoluted that a lie is now propagated as the truth in New Zealand's major newspaper?

Last week I was invited to a Barnardos organised Every Child Counts conference in Auckland. Very unusual. It'll be harder for me to get there than some of the other participants because I live in Wellington. In fact, the cost of an airfare could even be prohibitive. But I am not going around saying I have been excluded from participating.

That would be a lie.

Ever since the rush-of-blood decision to exclude Maori, Mr Key has, quite correctly, been seeking to fashion a compromise.

A compromise? How about inclusion on the same terms as everyone else.

2 comments:

Andrei said...

Grievance politics is apparently progressive.

I suppose progressive politics is an oxymoron.

Anonymous said...

Big big surprise.

Of course, the MSM (and Rodney) misses the real serious discrimination in all the plans for the super-city - that non-ratepayers get to vote

I can still remember when as a student, I didn't get to vote in council elections - only the landlord did! It didn't seem such a bad idea to me at the time, and is clearly so much better now! Really, why should a landlord how owns ten properties get only one vote when they are paying ten rates bills (or someone in a !0Million dollar house not get 20 votes if someone in a 500,000 dollar hovel gets only one).

Frankly I'd let the Maori have a couple of reserved seats for auld lang syne (like the house of lords :-)
if we fixed the representation in the rest of the super-city (or the country).

A couple of maori seats, and 20 seats elected on 1 vote per 1 Million worth of property owned (less than 500,000, no vote) would be a far better solution than the one Rodney is supporting.