Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government doesn't need a petty issue around race relations

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Inevitably, the Aussies have picked up on the slur from Chris Luxon, where he said when talking to Aussies - it pays to be ‘incredibly simple’.

And they seem to be largely taking in the spirit it’s intended, which is just a bit of humour. And it also means Luxon’s play worked.

Which is - by having a crack at the Aussies to distract us from the actual issue, which is Paul Goldsmith taking Māori words out of the Matariki invitation.
Look, let’s get to the heart of this, this was a dumb thing for Paul Goldsmith to do.

Yeah, I get he might want an invitation from him to be authentic to him and if he doesn’t make a habit of going around using Māori words in a tokenistic fashion to show off his inclusivity credentials, then sure, he might want to take out the Te Reo and replace it with English - fair enough.
But Paul Goldsmith is going have start being a little bit smarter and strategic about this, because this Government doesn’t need a petty issue like this on race relations to deal with. It has got enough going on as it is.

A lot of what the Government's doing on race relations is worthy and does need to be done.

Repealing the Māori wards, tidying up the Treaty Principles, halting co-governance, putting an end to certain ethnicities getting priority surgery - and they can defend that stuff quite easily on democratic and equal rights grounds.
But when Paul Goldsmith does something like taking Māori words out of an invitation - although it may be true to his way of speaking - what he does is he makes this democratic and equal rights reset just look like an anti Māori thing for some people.

Now to be fair to him, he’s not the only minister who’s been caught fighting petty battles like this, he's just the latest.
But it would pay for these guys the next time they want to take Māori words out of a document to really think about whether that, if leaked, is something they want to add to the Government's race relations agenda.

Because there is a very fine line between appearing to be for equal rights and appearing to be just anti-everything Māori.

And frankly, there are much more important things going on in this country right now. An energy crisis, a possible recession, a massive problem in health - just to name a few.

But what are we going to remember about this week? Paul Goldsmith’s invitation.

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