Last Thursday evening (May 5th) I happened to catch the tail end of an item on the TV One current affairs programme, Seven Sharp. I was flicking through the channels at the time, and to be honest, Seven Sharp is something I’ve never more than glanced at before. But I caught part of an interview with New Plymouth mayor, Andrew Judd, who was explaining the reasons he wouldn’t be standing for re-election this year. He used the very powerful term ‘recovering racist’ to describe himself and this is what grabbed my attention.

Mr Judd was talking about how his attitude to Maori had undergone a change during his three years as mayor. That at first he was ignorant of the relevant issues – in fact, when he first became mayor, he knew nothing of local history and hadn’t even stepped foot on a marae. As he became better-informed, he concluded that Maori should have a voice on his own city council. This caused a backlash from Pakeha in his constituency who disagreed. The personal abuse he received ranged from threatening letters to being spat on in public. At one point, Grey Power put together a petition that led to a referendum to vote against the council having a Maori member.

The kinds of things he was talking about are nothing new, of course. But it was reassuring to hear a non-Maori person of some status speaking about this on national television.

It evoked a mixture of emotions in me… the strongest being disappointment that so little had changed since I co-led Treaty of Waitangi workshops in Otago in the 1990s. I also felt admiration that Andrew Judd was prepared to tell it as it really is. It’s clear that he’s hiked a very hilly and personally-challenging path since being elected mayor in 2007.

As the story drew to a close, what I didn’t expect was the opinionated response from presenter Mike Hosking. His words displayed an ignorance that is inappropriate in someone fronting a primetime current affairs programme. It’s left me feeling much more despondent about the state of affairs in our beautiful country. About how attitudes don’t change and how they can be perpetrated and reinforced by a few well-chosen words, spoken to a captive audience by someone who, by being in that position, is taken seriously by many of those watching.

There is an enormous gulf between what he said and what is actual reality. And there is layer upon layer of history lying beneath that reality.

I don’t usually write on this kind of topic. But it just upset me. Attitudes won’t change unless we know and understand our own history. Unless we teach our children to know our own history. Obviously, we won’t get any help on that as long as our schools can pick or choose which parts of NZ history to include in the curriculum.

(Of course, I’m referring to the fact that we still don’t require the New Zealand Wars to be a compulsory component.) But that’s a whole different blog.

Link to Seven Sharp, 05 May 2016

“We need to look after our indigenous people. If we can’t do that how on earth are we going to grow and become this multicultural country we say we are going to be.”
Andrew Judd, Seven Sharp, 05 May 2016

He moana pukepuke e ekengia e te waka.
A stormy sea can be navigated.
Māori whakatauki/proverb