KEY POINTS:
Where has Winston Peters been lately? Addressing his party's conference in Taupo at the weekend, he said "ordinary New Zealanders" were now an endangered species and he would save us from extinction. "Let's begin with our young," he said. "Why don't we have the national anthem sung again in our schools?"
Any parent or grandparent even dimly aware of children's education over the past 20 years would know they learn the national anthem. In fact New Zealanders who went to primary school in the 1980s, 1990s and the present decade stand out proudly beside older citizens because the young are usually the only ones who can sing the Maori as well as the English verses of the anthem.
It is among older citizens that Mr Peters has always found his core support and the inclusion of Maori in the anthem might be one of the modern developments that leave his supporters feeling they are an "endangered species". New Zealand is becoming more attuned to its twin heritage and more cosmopolitan. Mr Peters promised that the New Zealand First Party would do its utmost to resist both trends.
He made his strange comment on the anthem in the same breath that he condemned "separatism" and flagged a hard line on immigration for the election next year. He has seized upon the arrests of Maori activists two weeks ago as evidence of "militant separatism" and rightly castigates those who are writing and protesting in support of the arrested people. But Mr Peters is guilty of the same prejudgment.
"We have groups calling for separate nations within our nation and prepared to use guns and violence," he told his members at the weekend. We do have such groups but whether they seriously threaten to use guns and violence is a question sensible people will put on hold until the police present the evidence that prompted their extraordinary anti-terrorism operation.
Mr Peters says those who march against the arrest of Tame Iti - "not because he is guilty or innocent, they are marching because he is brown" - are supporting "apartheid". The reference to apartheid is just silly and unworthy of anyone in Parliament, let alone our Foreign Minister. The South African word applies to a system of separate development imposed by a minority on a majority.
Maori will never be a majority in New Zealand and there is no suggestion from those who seek some sort of self-government for their iwi or Maori nationally that they aim to rule the majority. Nobody knows quite what "Maori sovereignty" or "tino rangitiratanga" means. Everyone who uses the term seems to have a different definition. But it reflects a need for the kind of national expression every person needs.
As a Maori, Mr Peters knows this better than his audience but chooses not to explain it. "Most Maori," he says, "want to be part of and enjoy their country ... we call on these Maori to join the fight against militant separatism."
There need not be any such "fight". Militancy, if it exists, can be met with the full power of the law. But separatism, if we must call it that, cannot be defeated by force or by fighting talk from mainstream politicians.
Maori, unlike other minorities, have no other country that can express who they are. New Zealand has made room for that expression in many ways, such as the anthem, but may need to be more imaginative yet. Mr Peters lets his support slumber between elections but knows the buttons to push when he needs to re-awaken it. The buttons are called fear and resentment. Unerringly, he is pushing them again.
