Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says University of Auckland's action is comparable to the Ku Klux Klan. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says University of Auckland's action is comparable to the Ku Klux Klan. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Deputy Prime Minister and New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters says the University of Auckland’s action of having designated areas for Māori and Pasifika students were comparable to alt-right racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
“It is phenomenal that we not only would accept this as New Zealanders, but that some people have not learnt the lessons of our world’s history of horrors with this type of thinking,” Peters said.
The Act Party is trying to shut down segregated sections in universities, an action which is being slammed by Te Pāti Māori as “damaging and inflammatory”.
“What we are seeing from the Act Party is only another attempt to misrepresent tangata whenua and paint the picture that Māori get preferential treatment. The assertion is damaging and inflammatory to their divide-and-conquer rhetoric that they have been pushing since the 2023 campaign,” a Te Pāti Māori spokesman said.
“Safe spaces for minority groups in university aren’t new. They exist for equity groups such as students with rural backgrounds, migrant students, Māori, Pacific and our disabilities whānau. What we see here is another targeted attack on Māori tauira.
“Creating safe spaces to empower minority communities to thrive and achieve whilst creating a sense of interconnectedness should be celebrated.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he hasn’t seen “the detail” of the segregated sections but at first glance, he said they looked “totally inappropriate”.
“There is no place for discrimination or segregation in New Zealand. Universities should be places of inclusion, not exclusion,” Luxon said.
He did not respond when asked about his deputy’s comments comparing the action to the KKK.
Peters said on X (Twitter) that some universities have become a haven for “woke cultural brainwashing” where “they teach and clearly actively participate in, dangerous rhetoric and demonstrable race-based practices”.
An area for Māori and Pasifika students at Auckland University has stirred controversy.
“They try to justify their actions by attributing it to some sort of ‘moral cultural crusade’ and wilfully ignore the direct comparisons to the KKK and the apartheid way of thinking where we are divided by race,” Peters wrote.
Act tertiary education spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar said she is contacting all the universities in the country and will be attempting to remove the “segregated” areas.
She said the signs are reminiscent of an “ugly past” that New Zealand has left behind.
She wants an explanation from Auckland University to the taxpayers who “keep their doors open”.
“It is disappointing that it even needs to be said, but Act’s position is that blocking people from spaces based on their ethnicity is unequivocally wrong,” Parmar said.
Photos show a sign outside a study area in the central Auckland campus saying: “This is a designated area for Māori and Pasifika students”.
Shakeel Shamaail says segregated spaces for Maori and Pasifika students are vital for wellbeing and to counter discrimination they face on a daily basis.
Photo / Jason Oxenham
University of Auckland law student Shakeel Shamaail, of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kurī and Taranaki descent, was outraged at the Act Party’s position, saying the spaces are vital for wellbeing and counter discrimination they face daily.
The spaces for Māori and Pasifika are a long-standing tradition at the University of Auckland and were championed by writer Ranginui Walker and politicians Hone Harawira and Efeso Collins.
Shamaail said Māori and Pasifika students deserve exclusive spaces and it is a long-standing tradition.
The spaces create “balance in what would otherwise be an imbalanced university scene”, Shamaail said.
Māori and Pasifika students on campus are willing to go to “great lengths” to fight for their spaces and community on campus, he said.
“At no point are we ever going to give up on this fight and pretend like the discrimination we are up against is all right,” Shamaail said.
“It’s spaces like these which we can call our tūrangawaewae, to see these spaces which some of us consider wāhi tapu because that’s all we got to come under immense scrutiny discrimination against simply because those are spaces are for our people.”
