Tapu Misa: If this is cultural imperialism, there's a lot of it around

The really interesting thing about that Remuera businessman who refuses to shop at Foodtown because of its "Give it a Go" Maori language promotion is not that he felt so offended by having his ears assailed by another language but that he felt so entitled to be offended that he went public with it.

"I'll decide when I want to learn a language, whether it's Maori or Chinese or any other," sniffed Alan Walker. Perhaps it hasn't filtered through to Remuera yet that Maori is an official language of this country.

He's shopping elsewhere now, which is ironic given reports that Foodtown in Grey Lynn, a hitherto proudly multicultural place, was guilty of its own brand of cultural imperialism having issued an English-only edict to its multilingual staff. No other language is to be spoken on the shop floor because it makes some people feel uncomfortable.

Apparently you just never know if those brown folk are saying nasty things about you - or planning a revolution.

Of course, it goes without saying that the rules of engagement in mixed company require courtesy and sensitivity on both sides, but banning it even in the tearoom, as another company did last year, smacks of cultural high-handedness. People who can't deal with their discomfort need to get over themselves, "give it a go" or expand their cultural horizons with a bit of travelling. It's a case of walk in my jandals for a while and see how you like it.

Call it cultural imperialism, Euro-centrism, or just a plain old-fashioned case of my culture is better than your culture - there's a lot of it going around.

That cafe owner in Sanson, for example, who refused to hire a woman because of her moko, thereby missing an opportunity to get her own resident tourist attraction.

Or the way in which comments by some Maori defending the beleaguered Te Wananga o Aotearoa have been interpreted by some in the media.

Some people have taken this as another example of Maori arguing that Maori organisations should get a soft ride on the basis of culture. It's even been suggested that such concepts as whanaungatanga ought to be dispensed with since they serve no useful purpose in modern society, and certainly not in a thriving business environment.

Well, no. Actually, being true to one's cultural roots and running a successful business aren't mutually exclusive. It just requires deft management.

But arguing that there's room for more than one world view on the issue, and that this view might be valid and workable, is likely to be met with a barrage of criticism about cultural favouritism - even when you're talking about an organisation such as the wananga, which has a mandate to be responsive to the needs of its mainly Maori students who, frankly, haven't fared well under an education system that operated under the assumption that one rule for all means one way for all.

I don't suggest for a minute that the wananga should be allowed to operate outside the terms and conditions under which it received its considerable public funding, whether its the $161 million claimed by chief executive Rongo Wetere, or the $239 million put out by the Government.

Organisations such as the wananga owe it to their students and community (not to mention the taxpayers) to make sure they toe the line. Having clear lines of accountability, rigorous governance and systems to deal with conflicts of interest isn't negotiable. But who in their right minds would suggest otherwise?

Being accountable shouldn't rule out being allowed to operate innovatively and differently if it means being able to effectively serve a sizeable and needy section of the community that everyone else has failed to engage.

If that means arranging phone lines so its first-year students can access the internet, as the Otaki-based Te Wananga o Raukawa has done, or arranging group discounts so students who need computers can buy them, what is the problem?

Some of the allegations hurled at the wananga (the limousines, and the buying of a literacy programme, for example) have been dismissed as fanciful. It's been pointed out, too, that other institutions have bought property. Others spend thousands on marketing people who scour the world looking for new recruits.

We could quibble over the spending of many publicly funded institutions. What's more important is whether they're delivering what they're paid to deliver within the law and the terms of their funding.

Is the Government getting value for money? (Education Minister Trevor Mallard says the wananga has too much money, but whose fault is that?) Are the 63,000 students enrolled in the wananga's 13 campuses getting quality courses that make a real difference? (Apparently, with some exceptions - that now cancelled policing course, for example - they are.)

Whatever the truth of the serious allegations hurled at the wananga - and I'd prefer to wait for the verdicts of both the Auditor-General and the Qualifications Authority - you have to wonder how it could have got away with half of what it's been accused of if, as one MP has said, it's been "audited within an inch of their lives".

Six audits in the past 18 months, and an investigation by a multi-party parliamentary select committee have failed to turn up a hanging offence. If that's not accountability, I don't know what is.