14 Comments
User's avatar
John McLean's avatar

Thanks Boris, I agree with your "power play" take. That's just one of the aspects of these debates that really shits me - that the likes of Willy Jackson are somehow the principled ones. These types, plus the creepy Rob Campbells of our little nation, are clearly opportunist gravy trainers thinly masquerading as brave champions of Maori people in general - which is of course rubbish

Expand full comment
John McLean's avatar

Thanks Linzey for those comments. I guess the Maori-indigeneity debate is mostly semantic. Certainly, if Maori were indigenous, then all truly indigenous Maori are long dead and differential civil rights certainly shouldn't be dished out to people who just happen to have Maori ancestry. Race is a dead end phantasma. Interestingly, and as you allude to, the current state of research indicates that original "Maori" came from various "last-stops" around the Pacific - far more interest, at least to me, than some crap about a particular number of boats arriving uniformly from the Cooks

Expand full comment
Just Boris's avatar

Great opinion piece, fully agree. And I share your obvious loathing for that fat prat failed finance minister who royally f***ed our economy. Cindy was awful, but she was just a naive little girl. Robertson was worse & he epitomises woke and idiocy and his legacy is a tragic one. I cringe daily that he’s now earning 600k in that role.

Woke will however die slowly methinks. This quote from Health NZ as an example:

‘Karakia are used to increase the spiritual goodwill of a gathering, to ensure the success of a project, and to enhance the mana and tapu of people and their environment.’

Show me ANY project that has been improved by karakia! This superstitious bunkum slides in under wokeness but is just a simple power play by radical Maori. Hopefully the masses will get sick of this expensive BS too.

Expand full comment
Ian Butcher's avatar

A great article thanks John, packed full of highly repeatable one-liners. My favourites among the many are:

“Aotearoa thought it could afford Woke. New Zealand knows it can’t. The Woke Cloak is Broke.”.

Expand full comment
Mark Newcomb's avatar

Well put John, and I so hope you are correct. How we ever let Wokery slip through our guard and get so crazy is a black mark against the "Silent Generation" (to which I belong, born 12/1944), and the early "Baby Boomers' born around 1945- 1950. We would have been in our early 20's and 30,s around 1970 when it all started, and having too much fun to notice the rubbish Wokery infiltrating our society, most especially in the academic landscape, and it is to our discredit that we did not see it coming. Still- we still have some teeth left and now is a good time to sink then into the remains of Wokery and finish it off.

Expand full comment
John Turner's avatar

Totally agree with this opinion piece and hope we can put the Woke behind us and build a better New Zealand together.

Expand full comment
Linzey's avatar

Excellent piece, but I disagree that Maori are indigenous to New Zealand. When they can name the 9 waka that BROUGHT them here from Melanesia, somewhere near the Cook Islands, the Maori of which are closely related to our earliest Maori COLONISTS, it is contradictory to persist in claiming they are indigenous. Australian Aborigines are indigenous to Australia. Maori of New Zealand are settlers (albeit early), same as the rest of us. Indigenous does not mean brown.

Expand full comment
Sydney Harvey James Rickard's avatar

Are the wakas breeding . I always thought there were 7.

Expand full comment
John McLean's avatar

Truth is always more interesting than fiction. There were of course no atavistic wakas; some sort of sailboats, long extinct. And increasing evidence that Polynesians arrived in New Zealand from all over Polynesia, at different times

Expand full comment
Linzey's avatar

I always thought 9. Let's agree on 8.

Expand full comment
Jim Dowsett's avatar

Excellent column thanks John. Thanks goodness woke is dying, we should drive a stake through its black heart to ensure it never returns.

Expand full comment
Robert Kay's avatar

I fervently hope you are so right.

Expand full comment
Mark Heatherbell's avatar

A good study of Wokeness John. It certainly has thrived on our isolated island, and has infected our bureaucrats. Time to weed them out whatever the cost it will be worth it.

Expand full comment
Simon Bennett's avatar

Great stuff John.

Expand full comment