In his latest message to our great nation, maverick Maori Party MP Hone Harawira says he is merely holding up a mirror to New Zealand society by repeating claims of never-ending rape and pillage by the Pakeha, whom he clearly despises.

Hone Harawira. Visitor to, but non-respecter of, Western culture
Hone Harawira. Visitor to, but non-respecter of, Western culture

A mirror it might be, but it’s of the distorting sort usually found at fairgrounds and circuses, places where Harawira might be more at home. Words such as rape and mother*****r come easily to him, but that is perhaps because such crimes and misdemeanors more often than not feature “his people”, and Maori have a history of dreadful violence that stretches back into the mists of antiquity.

Harawira has spots he can scratch but cannot change. His style of politics always ends in failure. He crosses the boundary not only by appearing to have issued a false apology for calling Pakeha white mother******s, but by his assumption that a minority, race-based group (presumably led by him) should own New Zealand’s coastline and everything under the surrounding sea.

The history of his people contains not a trace of democracy. It is one of internecine warfare and tribal exploitation in the quest for food and land. Harawira must have some of this heritage in his blood; it shows when he boasts of becoming an MP despite about 35 court appearances.

Nevertheless, he makes a couple of valid points that should be acknowledged. Harawira is a leading member of the brown racists who are counterparts to a widespread but much less vocal group of white racists.

For generations, migrants to this country have been fed spurious propaganda about New Zealanders’ racial tolerance. After all, the colonists never put Maori in reservations, or practised genocide against them, did they? In the Sixties, people talked about a Maori “way of life” that involved a non-materialist attitude to work and possessions, explaining why they rarely turned up for work or school on time (if at all) and were invariably poor.

After almost half a century of welfare, Waitangi “reparations” and a future that seems guaranteed to perpetuate the culture of victimhood, the result has been a growing suspicion of Maori by white people. Many of them are simply fed up with outmoded characters such as Hone Harawira and by the continual social problems presented by his under-achieving people. There may well be new Maori elitist rich, but this new wealth does not appear to have filtered down to the problem. “White” resentment is quietly expressed at dinner parties, over the garden fence or in soundproof corners of the pub.

It hardly ever reaches the media, still less the desk of Race Relations Commissioner Joris Debris.

Handing over vast sums for Maori to spend on their own version of social services, as advocated by the sly Tariana Turia (whose proposal implies that Pakeha policies in this respect have failed), will probably do little to improve health and education among “her people” but may well reinforce the idea that this country is gradually developing a unique form of apartheid. The murdered Kahui twins bear testament to the Maori Party’s failure to deal with their own, along with Maori’s apparent refusal to join the majority as a unified society with shared rights and responsibilities.

Handing over the foreshore and seabed to the likes of Harawira and people whose ancestors could not even control fire has as much chance of creating racial harmony as doubling the size of Joris Debris’ salary and staff. The only way forward is to clear the decks by swiftly putting a finite deadline on treaty claims (with no indexing loopholes), disempowering space-wasters such as Harawira, his racially based Maori Party and the Race Relations Commission, and by scrapping all the PC baggage that supports the illusion that ours is a country at peace with itself.

Beyond flag-wavers and bigots of every colour, there is an overwhelming majority of reasonable people who are appalled by these sideshows. They only wish to get on with each other and get on with lifting New Zealand from the lower ranks of developed countries – something evidently beyond the ken of politicians all the way from Robert Muldoon down to Hone Harawira.