KEY POINTS:
The television broadcasters were mesmerised on Thursday when Prime Minister John Key was roughed up by a couple of inarticulate malcontents as he arrived at Te Tii marae at Waitangi: TV3 ran the footage twice, the second time in lip-licking slo-mo, and the state broadcaster, not to be outdone, treated its viewers to four separate chances to watch the fracas.
But, hungry though the telly people were for a fracas, the real story was how upbeat and full of goodwill the 169th anniversary celebrations were. Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples said this year had been "one of the best". Key's decision to go into coalition with the Maori Party even though he did not need their votes to form a government has plainly been read as a positive sign and the warm welcome accorded the PM was evidence of that.
The tenor of the times was perfectly captured by Maori Party MP Hone Harawira, on his day no slouch as a provocateur himself. On the eve of the celebrations he said that, after some agonising, he had come to recognise the party's alliance with National as an opportunity - not a betrayal of principle. "If we fail," he said, "let it not be because we didn't try hard enough." It may come from an unlikely source, but it's hard to imagine a more appropriate rallying cry for our national day.
