'I’m not going to stand here and justify how I was raised' - Minister for Children Karen Chhour during Question Time at Parliament on May 21, 2024. Photo / Mark Mitchell
'I’m not going to stand here and justify how I was raised' - Minister for Children Karen Chhour during Question Time at Parliament on May 21, 2024. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.
OPINION
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Welcome to the Politics Briefing in a highly charged week as two controversial bills affecting Māori progressed in Parliament.
The most extreme language was used by Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi when she again referred to Government policies causing the “extermination” of Māori, although she expanded on the meaning of it.
“The parties of the Government have doubled down on the extermination agenda for Māori,” she said. “My use of that word [earlier this month] made a lot of you uncomfortable, and I’m glad to hear it.”
She described the repeal of section 7AA as being: “A targeted extermination of our babies ... exterminating any ounce of culture, identity and any sense of their Māori selves.”
Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: 'My use of [the word extermination] made a lot of you uncomfortable, and I’m glad to hear it.'
Removing section 7AA from the legislation removes the part of the act setting out the obligations of the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki including having regard to the whakapapa of Māori children and the responsibilities of their iwi and hapū.
“I have seen a statement claiming that if section 7AA was around when I was a child, I would have been ‘raised Māori’ and would have been connected with my whakapapa and would have known my Māoritanga,” Chhour told the House. “The statement goes on to say that I was raised Pākehā with a ‘disconnection and disdain’ for my own people and that my experience is exactly why we need section 7AA.
“I’m not going to stand here and justify how I was raised, but I am also not going to let anyone else, especially Te Pāti Māori, think that they can tell my story for me, especially when they have no idea what they’re talking about.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sings the praises of Finance Minister Nicola Willis at the National Party’s regional conference in Palmerston North on May 19. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Meanwhile, the Privileges Committee met in private yesterday to discuss the complaints about aggressive behaviour in Parliament by Green MP Julie Anne Genter and is due to meet again next week.
Quote unquote
“This is the hangover after the wild party. And, as everyone knows, the wilder the party, the longer and messier the hangover” - Finance Minister Nicola Willis in her last pre-Budget speech on what she calls the post-Covid-19 party.
“I think everybody will come away a bit disappointed ... but hopefully it is setting the right direction” - Former Finance Minister Steven Joyce on the Budget (Newstalk ZB).
Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March swore while Labour MP Phil Twyford was speaking during a debate on immigration. Photo / RNZ
Goes to Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March for his F-bomb during an interjection on Tuesday. “Come on! F***! You voted for the bill without those amendments.” Incidentally, Barbara Kuriger, who was in the chair at the time, has told me she did not hear it and, if she had, she would have required the MP to apologise for such unparliamentary language. He said it after Phil Twyford said Labour was supporting a bill on mass arrivals only because of safeguards that were being proposed.
Bouquet
Gisborne's Waipaoa River burst its banks in several places during Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / LINZ
Goes to the MPs playing netball and rugby at a sports tournament in Gisborne tomorrow to fundraise for farmers still recovering from Cyclone Gabrielle.