#New Zealand politics

[balthazarslostlibrary]

Actually deranged behaviour. This guy is supposedly the minister for arts, culture, and heritage, but I guess National is really going mask off on how the only heritage they care about is white coloniser heritage. It also makes this twat look so nonsensical just on its face.

No one can seriously say that National doesn't have an anti-Māori bias at this point and not be lying through their teeth.

[mucking-faori]

Me when I definitely don't have a history of adding underage girls I meet while visiting schools on social media and sending them personal dms

[irawhiti]

kia ora! i would like to suggest the coining of a term that would hopefully help a large demographic of mostly-forgotten-about māori to connect with each other and share our experiences to feel less alone, congregate around a concept regardless of country of origin and upbringing, and organise as activists.

i politely ask as many people to spread this as possible to help indigenous people organise with each other and to get the largest amount of interactions possible.

anyway, with all that being said,

i would like to coin the term "ngāti rangiātea" for māori who do not know their iwi to use.

this is based on the well known whakataukī/proverb, "i will never be lost, for i am a seed which was sown from rangiātea." i chose this whakataukī due to the spiritual significance of rangiātea as a place in māori culture, as well as to emphasise that no matter how it feels, we are not lost, we can find ourselves in each other, we can experience strength and self-realisation, and that we will exist with mana and without whakamā as rightful tangata whenua.

i've put my reasoning, personal experiences shaping my viewpoints on the matter, and various statistics under the cut to make this post reblog-friendly and i would suggest fellow māori read it regardless of whether or not they know their iwi. i also ask for the opinions of other māori, ESPECIALLY AND SPECIFICALLY other māori who do not know their iwi. in fact, i politely ask māori to share this with their whānau and people in general to share this with māori they know, especially any they know who do not know their iwi. a wide reach is what i am going for to get the largest amount of voices, critiques, and opinions on the topic and to avoid this from just becoming a very small thing that stays in an online echo-chamber.

to begin, the 2018 aotearoan census shows that, of the 775,836 people identifying as māori in aotearoa, roughly 17% are unable to identify their iwi in the census. this has gone up by 1% since 2006, showing that we are a considerably stable percentage of people. along with this, there are more than 170,000 māori living in australia and, while there are no solid statistics, there are an estimated 8,000 māori living in the UK, 3,500 in the US, 2,500 in canada, and 8,000 in other countries where there's no option for māori or any polynesians on the census.

this number adds up to 967,816 total māori and while there's no census in these countries asking for your iwi, i would go as far as to assume that there's a larger number of diaspora māori who are no longer able to identify their iwi than there are in aotearoa. of course, this is just speculation based on my lived experiences and conversations with other diaspora māori, however even assuming that it's the exact same amount globally, 17%, this is roughly 164,532 māori worldwide who do not know their iwi. nearly one in five māori do not know their iwi.

regardless of the specific statistics, the hard fact here is that there is a large percentage of māori who are unsure of their iwi for whatever reason. it's extremely easy to feel unsure of yourself, lost, disconnected, and uncomfortable speaking on issues regarding te ao māori when you're unsure of your iwi (or your hapū, whānau, waka, or anything else, but there is heavy emphasis on the iwi) and it's very easy for whakamā to take hold, especially when many māori who can recite their whakapapa aren't very polite or understanding about your situation to say the least.

and there are a lot of those people.

unfortunately, i've spoken to many māori who are of the opinion that not knowing your iwi due to colonialism, assimilation, forced disconnection, etc. means that you should not, cannot, call yourself māori. this is a disgusting viewpoint to have and in my opinion it spits on the fundamental concepts of māori culture and worldviews. thankfully this is a small yet vocal group of people, but even so, they add to the collective experience that makes it extremely difficult to navigate a world while full of whakamā and internalised racism. it can feel like there's no space for you, no term you can use, nobody you can relate to, no mana you can claim, nothing. when you cannot recite your whakapapa, it can feel like there's a part of you that's fundamentally missing.

as well as this, even when people mean well, when you are in this situation, you're usually told to just do some genealogy work, do some research, ask your family what they know. sometimes, these steps are simply not possible. other times, we've already done everything suggested over and over and over again. we're generally told "oh, that sucks, but one day you'll find out, keep looking!" in response to our lack of iwi. sure, they mean well, but i have never once been told anything along the lines of "that's okay, some things are lost to time through no fault of your own. don't beat yourself up over something your whānau had to hide to survive, what you do now to uphold your family's mana, what you do know about your whānau, and who you ultimately become is more important than what you no longer know."

and why? why is it seen as shameful to say matter-of-factly that i don't know my iwi? i'm not looking for comfort, i'm not looking to be told that, aww, there there, i'll find it eventually. i'm stating a fact. i do not need pity, i need my mana and voice to be respected.

this concept is what i want to emphasise by coining ngāti rangiātea. some things are lost to time, but we aren't. our loss of knowledge does not mean that we are unworthy of being māori, that we are unworthy of basic human respect. it does not mean that we have lost everything that our whānau knows. it is a scar, a reminder of what colonisation took from us, yes, but we cannot allow it to continue to be an open bleeding wound. we will not be lost to time and we should not bow our heads and act like we do not exist, that we're inconvenient, that we damage the "image" that māori have. in fact, we are an important aspect of māori culture and ignoring our existence does harm to everybody.

and of course we can't speak on some topics regarding te ao māori. this seems to be a topic that comes up frequently as a strawman. yes, there are some topics that would be irresponsible to speak on when we have no experience with them. this doesn't mean we can't speak on anything. having a collective identity, an "iwi" to congregate around even just politically, would help us speak on topics that we are more qualified to speak on than māori with knowledge of their iwi (yes, those topics exist, shockingly.)

we will never be lost, for we are a seed sown in rangiātea.

by identifying as ngāti rangiātea, i wish to emphasise that it's important to accept that sometimes, someone just won't be able to find every piece of information. loss of family knowledge is literally one of the primary goals of forced assimilation! we all went through it as colonised peoples, why must we continue to attach shame to those of us who were forced to obfuscate our history to keep our children alive? it's not a personal flaw, it's not a dirty secret, it's a fact of life that must not continue to be kept quiet out of shame, and the sooner we can focus on healing this subsection of our community, the stronger māori as a whole will become.

so, this is why i'd like to coin a term for māori who are unsure of their iwi. this is what i intend to achieve by giving us a name, our own "iwi" to congregate around, to identify ourselves as. instead of hanging my head and saying "i'm not sure what my iwi is, i'm sorry", instead of feeling inclined to beg like a dog to be treated with respect, i would like to look people in the eye and tell them that i am ngāti rangiātea. i would like this label to be synonymous with strength and not shame, that i refuse to let my whakamā swallow me, that i am just as worthy of calling myself māori as anyone else, that there are many others in my iwi (or lack thereof). i would like other people to have that as well and i would like those like me to feel less lost when all they've been told is "well, you'll learn your iwi eventually!" as if that's going to help someone feel better if they can't find their iwi.

and even if a person finds their iwi eventually, it's absolutely disgraceful that people are treated that they're not allowed to access many basic parts of te ao māori until they discover something they are not even 100% destined to find. i think that this view contributes to a lot of people who eventually find their iwi becoming unnecessarily arrogant towards those who truly cannot find this information, that they're just not putting enough effort in. if a person finds their iwi after identifying as ngāti rangiātea, they are fully welcome to continue to identify as this political label along with the iwi they now know they belong to as i wish for it to be a term that describes your experiences, your upbringing, and your community. you don't suddenly lose your whānau or your lived experience when you discover your whakapapa.

finally, this hopefully goes without saying, but ngāti rangiātea is not meant to function as a real existing iwi does. the term will hopefully be used as a way to identify yourself and other people and organise but i don't expect nor do i want this to be treated like a coordinated iwi. i expect and hope for this to be a decentralised way of identifying and experiencing community to make it easier to organise as a people. think of this the way the terms ngāti kangaru, ngāti rānara, ngāti tūmatauenga etc. are used.

-----

so, the tl;dr is that i feel like coining a name for a phenomenon that nearly one in five of all māori experience in quiet shame, to make it easier for us to congregate and find each other, speak on our experiences, organise as activists, feel less lost, and ultimately give us the ability to regain our mana as a community with shared goals and experiences. i have spoken to many māori who feel this way and my suggestion for this term is ngāti rangiātea, to show homage to the well known whakataukī, "i will never be lost, for i am a seed sown from rangiātea", to give us a community to work with, and to give us an "iwi" to list when asked instead of fumbling for words and feeling whakamā.

i would like to take the emphasis off of constantly looking to the future for what you may or may not even find with this identity. we are not broken, we are not lost, for we are seeds sown in ngāti rangiātea.

tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa, and if you got this far, thank you for reading.

[lilliths-httyd-blog]

isn't this shit fucking illegal??????

get me out of this fucking country

[sapphia]

waitangi dildo incident 2.0 incoming

the girl who threw the dildo at new zealand politician steven joyce has been spotted in this shirt

[geekariffic]

Fuck this government and their austerity measures! See what the Tories did to the NHS? Don't let NACTF do that here!

Get out in the streets!

[airyairyaucontraire]

Good summary from dear old John Campbell of the truly dire state of things we can expect over the next three years.

I work, you might remember, for the Ministry of Justice (please do not mistake this for me supporting everything about the justice system in New Zealand, I have a limited range of skills and I need to get paid) so I get a pretty clear view of how poverty and alienation drive criminal offending. These policies are going to make that worse.

It doesn't even get into the fact that they're going to try to make it harder for people with disabilities to access benefits. Because apparently they've had it too easy.

It's so bloody discouraging to foresee the damage this is going to do to individual lives and to our society overall.

[purrassicjet]

Pro tip: protest your school's ban on phones by playing poker at lunch times instead

[generallemarc]

Look, I'm Catholic. I don't believe there can be any divorce that maintains God's commandments outside of this specific situation at all, aside from the related situation of "my spouse is actually a murderer/rapist/terrorist" or the like. But in a democratic society, personal religious beliefs have no business informing government policy unless you've got a secular reason on top of it(ie, I think hard drugs should be illegal because their use is sinful and also because they destroy the lives of the users, and if that "and also" wasn't there my belief would have no basis being policy), and I cannot think of a secular reason, or any reason for that matter, for making people wait two years for a divorce. What right does the government of New Zealand have to dictate this to people? None, that's what. Utterly absurd.

[misspeppermint2003]

⭐️ Weekly Fandom Vote (Round 62) ⭐️

[samjstephens]

If Labour had any guts, they'd make it clear that projects consented under the coalition's Fast Track Approval bill are illegitimate, and that under a Labour government consents will be revoked without compensation. This would appeal to large blocks of the public, such as those across the political spectrum who have fought against seabed mining here in South Taranaki. And hopefully serve to blunt the damage the bill will do by making it risky to operate under fast tracked consents.

[lilliths-httyd-blog]

As much as I think it's fucking bizarre and weird that David Seymour would be replying to Snapchat messages from minors, props to the fucker who sent him this unprompted

fuckin' kiwi legend

oh yeah one of our politicians was responding to minors on snapchat

[sapphia]

The Right Are Engineering A Recession In NZ

tumblr isn't very good at local news, which is why i tend to get my nz politics information from elsewhere. so i can confidently tell you that aotearoa under national is totally, utterly fucked. like, not just in terms of all the social progress they plan to undo, though they do very much do plan to do all of that.

national+act+nzfirst have committed to a financial policy that makes zero fucking economic sense. you know how every time the economy is in bad shape, tories sieze the good economic opportunity to slash services or give tax cuts to the rich? imagine if that was happening for just no reason at all. there’s no crisis we’re facing this would even marginally help, but that's what nact+nzfs tax cut policy is anyway.

aotearoa is currently in a cost of living crisis, like much of the world, and our inflation is, to give it it's technical term, "sticky". This means that it's not still shooting up the graph like crazy, but it should have started to go down more by now according to predictions, but it hasn't, and is sitting at an unsustainably high level.

Inflation is bad because it eats away at the value of your money (not something you want generally) but this inflation is especially bad because it's inflation we created to ward off a recession back in 2020. NZ had the hardest and fastest lockdowns in the world, but at a huge cost -- our economy basically stopped overnight. Without goods and services being bought and sold, we would have been plunged into a financial crisis. But instead the government borrowed money to fund the wage subsidy and pay workers through the lockdowns, injecting money into and stimulating the economy.

This was a bill that was always going to come back to bite us, and for the past several years, the Labour government and the Reserve Bank had been playing a balacing game with our economy, steering us between a recession and a wage-price inflation spiral, with a recession definitely being the preferable one of the two. We actually had short soft one that we’ve come out of, exactly what Grant Robertson and Adrien Orr were aiming for.

Recessions can be small or big - inflation spirals are usually just big. We wanted to aim for a "soft" landing recession by hiking interests rates just enough to bring inflation back under control. The Reserve Bank uses it's tool - the Official Cash Rate, or the OCR, which basically sets the price of interest rates across the country, and the government also can use it's powers to create monetary policy to help the economy. A lot of the criticism Labour received before losing the election was about overspending in areas post-pandemic, as putting money into the economy through government spend by using debt to fund it genuinely causes inflation.

What a government should do during a time of inflation is remove money from the economy. For example, a right wing government would often issue an austerity policy, where the cut the amount of government spending through slashing programmes, benefits, staff, etc etc. A government could also increase taxes so people have less money to spend, could pay down government debt, could invest the money into a fund (e.g. NZ has a superannuation fund that's designed to be eventually self-funding set up by Labour that National have paused payments on when getting into government). It doesn't matter too much what, theoretically speaking -- the point is to get the money out of the economy.

What you definitely, definitely don't want to do during a period of high and sticky inflation is put more money into the economy. That would do the opposite of what you want. Labour were rightfully (at some points) criticised for their inflationary policies. So you'd think National would take their criticisms of Labour’s debt blowout and start paying it down to show how responsible they are, right? No, they’re cutting taxes for (mostly) the wealthy while offsetting this with austerity measures to make this “fiscally neutral”. They will make up for the inflationary effects of doling out money to landlords by cutting back essential government services, trying to frame it as a personnel and budget blowout (it’s not) and saying Labour mismanaged the books and we are in terrible financial shape (we are not; we have a triple A credit rating).

And further, it’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore our infrastructure crisis at nearly every level and every location. Our water systems needs billions of dollars of investment that our councils can’t afford to borrow, our rates are shooting up (and so will our rents), our ferries are old and broken down and Nicola Willis Minister of Finance just canned the “too expensive” deal that was needed to replace them — with most of the money going to into wharf upgrades that are desperately needed. There was a huge sunk cost; we’re not going to be able to to buy shit now. The ferries link the North and the South Island and are vital infrastructure; when they break down (which they did multiple times last year) it causes chaos and brings things to a standstill.

Why are they doing this? Land. It’s always about fucking land. All of National have divested in shares and have bought into land under the guise of this removing the “conflict of interest” that would exist if they had invested into specific companies. The usual alternative that solves this is a blind trust, but that’s not what most of the caucus has money in. Luxon alone sold about 12 million dollars worth of Air NZ shares and now has a property profile worth 20+ million. Oh, and he’s charging the taxpayer $50,000 a year to live in his own house. Thats 2.5 times what I get on the benefit that he’s cutting and putting sanctions on.

Nact don’t care if businesses go under and share prices crash; they’ll just sell their houses and buy stocks for cheaper. Their only concern is propping up the housing market ponzi scheme that they have all invested at the top of. This is why they’ve allowed councils to opt out of densification requirements and why they cut back the brightline test and are trying to boost the population with migrant workers; all of these things make house prices go up, make housing better for investors who make millions in untaxed capital gains.

NACT will not let the property market crash any further. Despite what they’re saying out loud, they actually want it to increase.

And they’re more than happy to wreck the economy to do it.

[anarchyaotearoa]

"Perhaps instead of superficial nods to the bravery and honour of those who died in NZ’s past wars at this year’s service, it would be far wiser for all of us reflect on the enlistment of neo-nazis in the NZ Defence Force, the rise of white supremacist nationalism and threats to the “national security” of the country."

keep reading

An excellent piece by anti-fascist activist Valerie Morse on the current state of the NZ Defence Force and its neo-nazi problem.

[geekariffic]

Jacinda Ardern has announced her resignation, leaving on February 7 2023.

She really came back from Xmas break and went, nah fuck it.

What an icon

[questionmelove]

“Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines.”

Currently this is from the Coalition agreement between two of the three parties (NZ First and National) that will form the next NZ government, just for the record, our sex education wasn’t extremely great to begin with and does vary wild in quality between schools.

The idea that guidelines would be removed and the implied justification that changing and removal of these policies would benefit reading and math scores when focused sex education barely takes up max a week in one class and Lgbt focus even less than that.

Better overall acknowledgement for the comfort and acceptance of our LGBT+ youth does not come at the cost of Math and English results.

Knowing about sex and gender and relationships comes with the benefit of supporting their mental and physical health.

I just hope that those who work in the education sector push back on this.