ACT Party leader David Seymour wants apology over Māori Party joke

ACT Party leader David Seymour wants an apology after Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi joked about poisoning Seymour with karaka berries.

Waititi made the joke during the Māori Party’s annual conference at the weekend, telling the audience he would use the karaka berries that made up a necklace he was wearing to poison Seymour.

“I’m genuinely concerned that the next step is that some slightly more radical person doesn’t think it’s a joke,” Seymour said.

Waititi, speaking of the necklace on stage at the event, said: “These are making my neck itchy … These are karaka berries, and they still got the poison in them, ka pai?”

“There you are, re-indigenise yourself with some native seeds … I hope that wasn’t livestreamed, because if our man carks it, we know what happened: [co-leader] Debbie poisoned him”.

There was laughter in the room at the remarks.

Let’s be clear, Rawiri is a dick and he’s as funny a stand up comedian as Kelvin Davis is a spoken word poet…

Election 2020: Kelvin Davis’ convoluted, bizarre election night poem

Kelvin Davis regaled, or befuddled, party faithful on Saturday night with a lengthy pseudo-poem hailing his leader “Whaea Jacinda” and deploring nefarious blue ogres of the opposition.

…clearly joking about killing politicians in the current febrile landscape that is ripe for political violence is fucking stupid and it allows Seymour to play the high ground, which is equally fucking ridiculous because push beyond this theatre of the offended and you have  the naked reality that ACT’s policy platform is radioactively far right and if implemented would see a race war erupt in NZ.

Look at ACT’s policies…

• Cut and freeze the Minimum wage
• Interest back on all student loans
• No Kiwsaver subsidy
• Cancel winter energy payment
• Dump all climate crisis legislation
• no more best start payments for families with new borns
• cut welfare payments
• no tax credits for research and development
• cuts to working for families
• $7b a year cut in public services
• Abolish Maori seats
• Abolish Human Rights Commission
• Abolish the Ministry of Māori Affairs
• Abolish the Ministry for Women
• Abolish the Ministry for Youth
• Abolish the Ministry of Pacific People
• Abolish the Ministry of Ethnic Communities

Let’s be very clear, ACTs call to strip the Treaty out of every law would start a race war.

Game it out:

• David Seymour cuts a deal with National in 2023 and launches its purge of every Maori political win since the Treaty was signed.
• Shutting down every co-governance arrangement would provoke absolute outrage within Māoridom and spark a vast number of immediate legal cases which would jam down any legislative process as every single decision made after Parliament passed  the law ending co-governance would become challenged. Political protests would erupt around the country and local councils would find local resistance as Māori groups universally set up occupations of shared governance assets.
• Likewise, abolishing Māori seats would ignite enormous protests, many of which would quickly escalate into violence. The UN would criticise NZ snuffing out indigenous voting rights and we would face global condemnation.
• The New Government would then attempt to find anyone within Maoridom who would willingly negotiate new Treaty ‘provisions’ with them. No one within Māoridom would willingly negotiate these and so the New Government, while dealing with increasingly violent weekly protests in the street, would announce that they are universally negotiating these new provisions on behalf of Māoridom. The news that not only has the New Government ended co-governance and abolished the Maori seats but are also now redefining the entire Treaty by themselves inspires all out violent protest and the New Government respond with increasing use of special terror laws and paramilitary Police to keep a lid on the escalating fury within Māoridom at the loss of their political rights.
• Increasingly global media attention is scathing towards the New Government.
• Donald Trump calls the New Government ‘wise’.
• While ending co-governance, abolishing Maori seats AND renegotiating the entire Treaty on their own, the New Government then announces that the Waitangi Tribunal is being ended. This causes an eruption of anger within Maoridom that manages to eclipse the current rage and entire regions are now in open revolt.
• Before the New Government are even in a position to remove consultation processes, Maori customary rights and any Māori funding, the country is plunged into a full blown race war which the New Government are not able to control.
• Vast chunks of the military refuse to open fire on a public demonstration after the New National/ACT Government order them to.

David can be as much of a smug intellectual as he likes, and he can pretend to be offended by Rawiri but selling raw meat racism to angry white males with policy promises that would lead to a race war isn’t clever politics, it’s fucking dangerous and it’s fucking ugly.

One of the things voters need to understand, is that when the right hold up co-governance like a Maori Health Authority, it’s not a seperate hospital for Māori only right?

I made this point in April of this year on Waatea…

OPINION: What does Chris Luxon see when he thinks ‘Māori Health Authority’?

Hand on heart, I’m not sure Chris Luxon understands what the Māori Health Authority is.

He keeps saying he doesn’t support a ‘separate’ health system and that all the Māori Health Authority will do is create more bureaucracy.

The way Chris sells it, the ‘Māori Health Authority’ would be a separate hospital, with a perpetual Haka and powhiri out front that only serves Māori while turning away Pakeha. He seems to envisage a premium health service for Māori while everyone else gets a second class system.

The reality of course is far less exciting.

…Morgan Godfery picks this point up and smashes the Rights argument…

Morgan Godfery: The Māori Health Authority isn’t separatist. It’s necessary.

…what really drives Pakeha fear of co-governance? The same fear that drives every colonial white descendent of injustice, that those we abused in the past will seek vengeance against us once they gain parity. Too often these fears justify ongoing control and with the rise of ACT and their far right agenda, those fears have real voice and a genuine chance of being implemented.

I don’t know how many times I need to keep pointing this out!

If this ACT madness gets anywhere near being implemented, this country will be plunged into civil unrest the likes we have never seen before in NZ.

That ACT are polling 10% shows how far the culture war polarisation that the woke activist base have fed has come back to bite us in the arse!

Less cancelling for pronouns, far more policy that makes life materially better for the poorest!

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