Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has come under fire from Te Pāti Māori for the way in which she was raised in state care. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has come under fire from Te Pāti Māori for the way in which she was raised in state care. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION
The double standard that obviously exists for Te Pāti Māori behaviour is ridiculous.
Depending on how you get your news, you may be completely unaware that Te Pāti Māori (TPM) launched a personal and racist attack on Children’s Minister Karen Chhour this week.
There was debate on NewstalkZB and two online articles, but that’s it.
Chhour, it is well known, had a tough upbringing, went through the state system and ended up cared for by others, including a foster couple. For most of us, those are the details that matter most.
“If Section 7AA were around in Karen Chhour’s time, she would have been raised Māori, she would have been raised being connected to her whakapapa and having a knowingness of her Māoritanga. Instead, she was raised Pākehā with a disconnection and disdain for her... people.”
Basically, what TPM is saying is that Chhour is not the right kind of Māori. That is a deeply troubling idea to promote.
On a personal level, this is hard for Chhour the human. She says she worries about her 12-year-old daughter reading comments calling her mum a racist.
Children's Minister Karen Chhour during Question Time in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
This is the kind of online trolling you would expect from anonymous losers hiding in the dark corners of the internet, not a political party with representation in Parliament.
David Seymour and Winston Peters regularly get pilloried for comments and policies that are far less inflammatory or directly racist. Both often get torn to shreds by the media for mere insinuations that we like to call dog-whistling to make them sound a little more sinister. Most of the time, it’s a very long bow being drawn by critics.
And yet TPM gets away with comments you don’t have to guess at. Repeatedly. There was hardly any coverage of the party’s official sports policy saying: “It is a known fact that Māori genetic make-up is stronger than others.”
Act Party leader David Seymour speaking at Waitangi. Photo / Michael Cunningham
The most attention their rhetoric got was when one of their junior MPs accused the coalition Government of having a “mission to exterminate Māori” – and even that was put down by one radio host as just “attention-seeking”.
Of course, that is exactly what it is. Few things are more considered than the words you commit to paper, or in this case social media. It’s deliberate.
And that is why the media have to drop the double standards and start holding TPM accountable in the way they do parties from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
If it’s not obvious to editors why they need to, here are two reasons.
First, waving through crazy stuff like this normalises it. If no one calls it out, it gets repeated until it’s accepted wisdom that there is a right and wrong kind of Māori. If the media really believe that they’ve done God’s work by calling out Winston Peters’ dog-whistling, they should do the same to TPM.
Second, we are about to have one of the most uncomfortable political conversations of recent times when we discuss Act’s Treaty Principles Bill. The draft should be out this year. That needs to be done with calm and measured language.
If TPM carries on with racist, personal attacks, it will inflame an already tense debate. The media seem to have decided Seymour is the biggest threat to peace here. Frankly, TPM is obviously more likely to inflame sentiment.
If you believe that past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, you know there will be more of this from TPM. Here’s hoping it isn’t tolerated like it was this week.
