Broadcaster Paul Holmes has fired a huge debate by tearing into Maori radicals and suggesting New Zealand should replace its national day, Waitangi Day, with Anzac Day in a Weekend Herald column.
Under the heading 'It's time to cancel our repugnant national holiday', Holmes wrote yesterday that the day was
dominated by a "group of hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos who seem to exist in a perfect world of benefit provision".
The strongly-worded opinion column drew hundreds of responses to the New Zealand Herald website, www.nzherald.co.nz, dozens of letters to the editor of the paper and was a hot topic on social media like Twitter.
Holmes said Waitangi Day was "repugnant".
"It's a ghastly affair. As I lie in bed on Waitangi morning, I know that later that evening, the news will show us irrational Maori ghastliness with spitting, smugness, self-righteousness and the usual neurotic Maori politics, in which some bizarre new wrong we've never thought about will be lying on the table."
