Poll Dancer by Keith Ng

Two weeks ago, Pita Sharples called for an inquiry into the use of Maori tikanga by government agencies and questioned whether it was done “for the benefit of the state more than for the benefit of the people”. Is political correctness alienating even Maori now? National seemed to think so, with the irrepressible Dr Wayne Mapp claiming that the length of Maori ceremonies meant that they would “actually make people less tolerant of Maori culture”.

So what was Sharples pissed off about? Unfortunately, the Maori Party’s press unit looks like its still finding its feet – its original press release forgot to mention *why* Sharples wanted a review of the state sector’s use of tikanga.

Obviously, he wasn’t suggesting like Mapp that Maori ceremonies are a waste of time. But nor was it just a simple matter that the ceremonies weren’t done quite right.

It comes from someone who is a leader of the Maori renaissance, at a time when Maori cultural expression is facing increasing pressure from liberal and faux-liberal quarters, and it’s about simultaneously preserving and evolving Maori culture by focusing on the core of those cultural expressions.

[Note: Commentary to come. I’ll let it simmer for a few days first. Plus I’m hungry.]

What are your concerns over the use of Maori tikanga (customs) by the state sector?

It's really very simple, tikanga is being used by various organisations and because it's sometimes not followed to the letter, or on a marae setting, then often there is abuse of the tikanga, either by the host, or the visitors.

Take the powhiri – [it] embodies some of our deepest spiritual and cultural concepts and beliefs. We recognise that institutions and organisations have encouraged the use of these tikanga out of respect for us, but the problem is the misuse of them, for whatever reason.

By misuse, do you mean not doing them right?

I mean doing it for the wrong reasons, or not doing it right, or being open to abuse from the public.

What do you mean by abuse from the public?

If a school tells a woman to stand behind the men, there is no protection for the school if people complain. They leave themselves wide open to be attacked. They're not on a Maori place and perhaps they haven't got any Maori elders present who know enough about the customs to explain them.

The point is [that] we the Maori cannot afford to have those institutions destroyed. So what do we do? We either take them out and keep them to our own situations, or we try and help the organisations do it for the right reasons and in the right manner. It is not something that you can just do physically - you have to do it mentally and spiritually.

What do you think are the reasons they are done now?

Oh, there're many reasons that are claimed, and a lot of them are crap. It began with the right reason - to incorporate tangata whenua custom into the local institutions, whether it's a school, whether it's a sports club, or whether it's a government department.

We've called for [government departments] to supply us with what kaupapa (regulations or instructions) they have written down about the tikanga that they use. The idea is to ensure that the reasons are appropriate and that the manner it's carried out is authentic in terms of the ceremony itself.

If we take [the powhiri], is about tangata whenua manuhiri (host and guests). Those concepts have to be present before you can have a powhiri. It is about te hunga mate, te hunga ora - the living and the dead. Reference has to be made to those, otherwise you don't have a powhiri.

It's like this: if there's a marae - that's the ground in front of the meeting house - that's noa, that's just ordinary. And the dogs can play and chase each other, the children can play. But the moment someone (not of the marae) stands at the gate, the ground becomes tapu (sacred), and a ceremony has to prevail to lift the tapu before it can be noa again.

So kids and dogs aside, ceremony comes into play, lifting the tapu, touching and meeting of people, sharing of breath and cooked food, ceremony over, noa again. It's an old custom, but it's related to our spiritual beliefs and cultural beliefs, that the person has a spiritual presence as well as physical presence.

The powhiri is about lifting of tapu on one group [by] the other, the coming together of two groups to be one so they can operate person-to-person without the spiritual and cultural restraints.

What are the ‘wrong reasons’?

It began as a desire to be authentic and to embrace Maori, but I think a lot of people do it now for number of reasons: one is because they've always done it; another one is because they have a lot of Maori staff and they want to show them off as being pretty cool; another one is because they think it's ‘the thing to do’ - in other words, PC.

I think there're many reasons why people do the powhiri without thinking [about] why they're doing it, or what they're doing.

Is it a case of ‘if they aren't doing it right, they shouldn't do it at all’?

If they aren't doing it right, they should be instructed in what they're doing and given help to do it right, or not to do it at all.

Do you think that it’s valuable just as a gesture of respect towards tangata whenua?

I recognise that what they're doing is good, showing respect and doing it, but it doesn't make it culturally safe for the people operating it or for the manuhiri (guests) that are coming in that don't know anything about it. You have to have more than just the heart to do it - you have to have the knowledge that goes with it, which allows it to be protected and to be implemented correctly.

Do you think that the state sector can use Maori tikanga properly?

You can do any [Maori] custom, as far as I'm concerned, so long as it's done for that right reason.

In Parliament, they have a group singing a welcome to people when they go into ceremonies - and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not making any claims, and it's not breaking any tapu, traditions. It is singing, and there's a feeling of being welcomed, but they're not making claims of lifting the tapu off you, or that you have to be new to the area or anything like that.

Do you find it offensive to see tikanga being exercised without the right reasons?

It's not really relevant whether I find it offensive or not. What is relevant is that this opens the door to the powhiri being brought into contempt and ridicule, and [that leads to] the decay of such a very important tradition to us Maori.

You get cases like Josie Bullock. Why would she want to sit in front of the men if she was told it was cultural sensitivity for her to sit somewhere else? Why would she want to force that issue? [National MP] Judith Collins [was] asked to sit in the second row, and [felt] offended by it. The point is, she either has to accept that custom or walk away from it. She has to accept that the people are applying a custom in terms of knowledge that she doesn't know anything about.

When I go to a different tribe and they've got a different etiquette, I observe their etiquette - I don't force mine on them.

[And] all these explanations about the men sitting in front to protect the women who are the givers of life - that's rubbish. That's absolutely incorrect. The men were traditionally the orators, and only the orators sat in front. It is a sacred group, because they are vested in the role of lifting tapu, and so they have to be seated away from everybody else.

That's how it comes that men sit in front of women. And until Maori change that custom, it's got to stay, because it's not for anybody else - whether it's Trevor Mallard or the lady down the road - to say ‘bad, bad – change’. Having said that, I am one personally who want that custom changed. I want women to sit [up front] and speak, because the role that men had as the orators on the marae was coupled the division of labour as it was in those olden times.

How do you go about changing a custom?

It's like a revolution. It's behaviour...

Aren't revolutions about breaking the rules?

That's right. But the ones who know about it have to break those rules. The ones who own it have to break those rules.

How are people from other marae finding this idea?

Oh, there's a lot of support for it, but it's very hard to break a custom. And [it] would have to be broken by marae, after marae, after marae, individually. You can only do it on your own marae, and then others have got to take up that thing.

It's similar with the women challenging us. [On] all the marae I have some dealing with and some say, we allow women to wield [the taiaha (long club)]. And because I'm still alive and because I'm a recognised master (of Maori weaponry use), there's not too much flak.

The reasons [behind] some customs have changed, and we need to change with it - the customs need to change. That allows them to be protected and to be preserved. If you don't, then they stand out like a sore thumb, as being archaic and without rationale.

[Having women speakers] is not about sex, it's about the best speakers in an age where the language is changing. There are many marae who put up speakers because they are male, who sometimes don't have the eloquence of language that their [women] elders have.

The women [also] tend to outlive the men, so you've got many widows on every marae. And often those widows not only have eloquent language, but they have the history and they have the knowledge behind various customs, whereas a young man of 26 may have done a university degree and learn to speak Maori, but his kaupapa is of today.

Are you optimistic that these changes will happen?

Well, I think they really have to, otherwise the ceremonies are going to come under bombardment every year and dwindle away. The change has come about because of the contemporary society in which those customs are embedded, and the pressure on them to 'be real' with the modern world. That's the dilemma, and it's something that will continue to feature.

If government departments stop using the powhiri because of the flak, it's a loss because they were prepared to embrace tikanga Maori and share something Maori. But on the other hand, it's fine by me so long as the custom remains in our settings.

Tze Ming called me up at 10:00. That's 10:00 *in the morning*! I rolled off my mattress to get the phone and instantly found my quarter-awake self struggling to defend a position I couldn't remember against some kind of argument around international treaties and laws that I didn't understand. In the violent barrage of words, ideas and Magna Carta citations that ensued, Tze Ming must have misheard me when I said "fundamental conceptual considerations" and thought I said "feelings" instead. Must be a Klingon thing.

It was just a practice run for two appearances that we'll have together this weekend. We're both going to be on the youth panel at the "Human Rights and the Treaty of Waitangi: Issues for Asian Communities" symposium on Sunday at Auckland University. We're also going to be on Chris Laidlaw's show on National Radio this weekend.

Anyway, diverging from my Hobbesian roots, my issue with the role of the Treaty is actually liberal in nature, and actually rather simple.

The role of the Treaty is that it is the document through which Maori chiefs gave the Crown the right to govern/have sovereignty over New Zealand, and thus allowed us, as subjects of the Crown, to settle in New Zealand. Therefore, the Treaty is the document that forms the basis of our rights as citizens.

Now, I'm as 16th century as the next guy, but there are a few things that I don't accept:

1) That monarchs have a divine right to rule.
2) That chiefs have a divine right to rule.
3) That our rights, as mere mortals, are derived from the aforementioned divine rights.

Please don't take this the wrong way, Madam Governor-General, but with all due respect, we are not your bitches. And, um, please don't hang me for sedition.

Nobody believes that our right to be in New Zealand is derived from Her Majesty, right? We live in a democracy, right? Government of the people, etc.? What we're saying there is that the government gets its right to rule from the people, not the other way around. And as much pompous fluff as we give to the Governor-General declaring her to be our liege, it's all just a bit of fun so everyone can dress up in tights and wigs every now and again, right?

So why then should we take seriously the idea that our right to be in New Zealand comes from the Maori chiefs who signed the Treaty?

After all, to accept that such an arrangement is still valid is to accept that rights come from rulers, and that rulers *own* those rights, that it is theirs to dish out, and that they then pass it on to the next set of rulers to dish out to their subjects. Moreover, to accept that our rights are derived from the Maori chiefs is to accept that our rights are derived from Her Majesty the Queen of New Zealand, who is currently holding those rights.

I conclude, therefore, that while it may be legally true - just like our lawful Head of State the Governor-General can legally have me tried for sedition - the idea of the Treaty of Waitangi as the source of our rights as citizens contradicts the reality of our political system (i.e. Not feudalism), and it is illiberal to boot.

Simply put: Power to the people!

[I've ballsed-up the timing here. I had a really interesting interview with Pita Sharples about the use of tikanga by the state sector. (Un)fortunately, it was much more interesting (he supports changing of the custom of women sitting in the back, among other more interesting, but less sound-bitable, things) and longer than I expected, so it has to wait until Monday. But come back for it - it's good, I promise. A most fascinating addition to the debate, and much more culturally focused as oppose to this straight political philosophy.]

Red-robed figures, carrying a proclamation from the head of state, swooshed purposefully across Parliament Grounds today; past a bit of light traffic on Molesworth Street; past schoolkids walking in the opposite direction; past bronzed sunbathers and barefoot, lunching civil servants; past security guards - barely numbering enough have their own soccer game (indoor soccer, that is); past me with half a chicken bagel in my mouth; then, past a line of flags at half-mast.

Only in New Zealand.

Inside, the MPs are already seated. Everyone sees the empty seat that Rod Donald has left behind. A simple photo - in a green frame - sits where he used to, too low to be clearly seen, but its presence is known. Later, a candle is lit on his desk.

His seat is on the Opposition side, to the (relative) right of New Zealand First and United Future, three seats down from Rodney Hide. Hide always said ACT and the Greens had a lot in common. Hide even has a degree in ecology, I think. I blame MMP - I wonder if Donald would do the same.

Like the first day back at school, seat-buddy alliances are forming. Some are looking awful lonely. Harry Duynhoven looks like the House matre'd. Georgina Beyers is officially one of the back-row's bad girls. National's front-bench looks strangely cramped. Maybe it's the view from where I was sitting. Maybe it's all the naked ambition. Maybe it's just Gerry Brownlee.

Bill English looks two decades younger than when I last saw him two months ago. It's probably just a new moisturiser or something.

The MPs are now being sworn in, alphabetically; some in lots, some by themselves. Some put their hand on a bible, many didn't, some make their vows in Maori, one put their hand on the Koran (presumably - I went to get a drink during the late A's and didn't come back until the D's). The P's have just been. I think Winston swore by the bible, Simon Power didn't.

Everyone, as they walked back to their seats, gave their condolences to the Greens.

Margaret Wilson did her head prefect walk to the Speaker's chair. Winston offered to help her do her job, sparking the first bit of ruckus in the House for this sitting. Go Winston.

The politician formerly known as the Perkbuster lectured Wilson on fairness and asked for, effectively, positive discrimination for the small parties.

Hugs and kisses for Greens as everyone left. Someone gave Keith Locke a great big hug. Didn't see what Peter Dunne did. I wondered which side was the fake one - the "you think differently therefore you are scum" theatrical outrage, or the "you have public sympathy therefore I love you" condolences.

Saw Steven Ching leave. And since National has taken over most of Parliament, I walked a gauntlet of National MPs on my way out. First MP I saw was Dr Wayne Mapp. He glanced down at my pass to see who I was, and I tried desperately not to crack up.

Ominous trivia - the sign on the door of the office right across from the Press Gallery:

"Brian Connell, MP."

(To grammar-nazis: The whole thing was written live-ish, on my iPAQ, sitting in the Gallery, and that's why the tenses are a bit mixed up.)

A fun Friday read, for those of you who can't be arsed working on Thursday.

Tom Scott - hands down best cartoonist in New Zealand - is constantly funny, sneakily insightful, and perpetually distracted. Before he was released into the wilderness of New Zealand's political landscape, he was the Listener's Press Gallery correspondent for a decade. He left that post shortly before I started as a student at kindergarten.

(The interview was done waaay back in January this year, but fortunately hasn't dated much. It was part of a (since abandoned) project on the Press Gallery itself.)

I read [the book you wrote after you left the Press Gallery] Ten Years Inside, and I was captivated by your description of your first visit to Bellamy's [the Parliament restaurant] in 1972. How does it compare now?

It was much better. It was primitive and raw, like something out of a wild-west town. I really loved it. The Bellamy's then had white-starched linen tablecloths and silver service, and everything was cooked in fat. The smell of carcinogens, sweat and beer and body odour... it was great, I loved it. This... [looking around Bellamy's] this could be anywhere, couldn't it?

Do you think the cosmetic changes to Parliament are indicative of more substantive changes?

This is now a large Hamilton bathroom, the whole place. It use to be a West Coast dunny. A lot of people would prefer a Hamilton bathroom to a West Coast dunny, but I like the dunny. The were talking about bowling [the Beehive] and extending Parliament - I would have gone for that option. This is awful. And it doesn't even revolve! If it revolved, it might justify its existence, but it doesn't even do that.

So how do you think the change in style reflects in the politics?

Oh, maybe it doesn't, you just need to draw artificial linkages. If you're straining to [write] an article, you'd make linkages where none exists. That's the role of the journalist late at night, desperate to fill up column space.

Yeah, I thought I had an opener there... ahem, well, in your book, you said that you had a respect for the "outmoded and outdated institutions of Parliament". After all these years, do you still?

Oh yeah, it's got to be clumsy, it's got to be slow, just so that change doesn't happen too rapidly. I quite like all the silly little vanities that make up the Parliamentary day. I love question time, I love walking through the chamber. When I came back to Parliament after working in the building, I had this sort of curious nostalgia for it.

When you work here for a long time, and you fretted late at night, it's curious - the same thing happened when I worked at a freezing work for long hours, and at a psychiatric hospital for long hours - you start to think that the building you're in, the institution you're in is actually totally real, and everything outside it is false. [It's] like you're in some sort of starship, and you've landed on an alien planet - you don't really want to leave, it just becomes your total world. I think that's the real problem with journalists - and the politicians - who stay here for too long.

Do you think they are insulated from what goes on outside?

I couldn't really speak for [the current Press Gallery], because I only know the old codgers. The journalists and the staff are probably more insulated than the politicians - at least the politicians have to return to their electorates.

I know that some of my friends have been here now for an awful long time, and they've become sort of institutionalised, same way a prisoner is. To get them out to another job, they'd have to have little alarms on their legs, they'd have to be rehabilitated back into society very slowly. They can't leave. They're addicted to the place.

Do you think it's something to do with Parliament itself, that it's designed to keep people in?

No, it's just an accident of the amount of time you have to spend here, and the emotions you pour into the job. And also, you think you're important. That's the great thing about politics - everyone thinks they're important here. The way you're treated makes you feel important. Journalists have their badges, attend press conferences, get on planes and fly first-class with politicians...

...and free alcohol?

No free alcohol - you have to pay for the alcohol as a journalist and it's not free. If you're looking forward to free alcohol, you in for a shock. Bellamy's [bar] up here might be closing soon, for lack of people going.

Does that shock you?

Well, compared to the old days, when people drank every lunchtime and every night after work... it was great! I'm not a drinker or a smoker, but I kind of enjoyed it. It was a bit like an old-fashioned country race meeting on everyday, and it was just nicotine and alcohol, all the time.

What do you think is special about being inside Parliament? What do the journalists see inside that you can't get from just reading everything?

You feel you're close to the pulse, you get to see the politicians close-up. There's a great line of Chairman Mao's: You can't smell the flowers from a galloping horse - but you can smell the horse. And in Parliament, you smell the horse.

As part of a politician's [tour], I was in Berlin shortly after the wall came down; I've been to the White House, the United Nations, the British Houses of Parliament; had lunch with Indira Ghandi about a month before she was shot; I got to the South Pole with Jim Bolger, and these are things that an ordinary citizen wouldn't do. There's a compromise [though], because the proximity comes with certain responsibilities, you can't be as... well, you can be vicious once, if you wanted to, but you'd never get on the plane again, so you have to temper what you say, because it's the price of access.

Do you think smelling the horse rather than the flowers is important?

It is when you work at the Press Gallery. You feel the horse's flanks beating beneath your legs, the nostrils are flaring, you're galloping and all the landscapes are blurred, but you're holding onto the leader in front of you and you think 'this is exciting, here I am on it - I'm on the same horse as the Prime Minister' - and it's intoxicating.

Did it distort your perspective?

How else could you do it? You have to be here to cover it. Like most of us down here, I like entertaining stories. It's fantastic, silly little things like Muldoon, on the night of the snap election being so drunk they had to let the air out of his tyres. That's hardly a big political moment, but it's such a telling little human moment. Those sorts of little things... a former Speaker of the House getting women journalists into his room and he wanted to brush their hair! They found it quite strange, sitting in his room, having their hair brushed by the Speaker of the House.

I love those dopey, human eccentricities, really. The grand historical sweep of politics I leave to the rest of the Gallery, really, to Colin James and John Armstrong - you know, clever bastards who read a lot more and study a lot more.

Are the two related? The little human moments and the grand business?

People who are doing grand things have those human moments as well. No one lives a life being essentially profound all the time. I'm sure Helen Clark has sat on the toilet at home and there's no toilet paper - it happens to everybody.

Watching your documentary on David Lange, it seemed like you made a very strong link between his personal life and the political events while he was in Parliament...

David is a classic example of someone whose political life was tied up in his emotional life. The kind of personal turmoils he was going through; his personal strengths and his personal weaknesses were reflected in the way he conducted his office. He was fragile and brilliant, and those things came to bear in the decisions he made and what happened to his government.

It was quite interesting, that doco. These guys [Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble et al.], it was twenty years on, they all knew that David was not well, so they were more honest. I just think they have less vanity now.

Some politicians have said that you don't make any friends in politics. I always thought that these guys were all friends. They all shy away from the word 'friend'. They say 'we were close, and we were good colleagues', but they find it hard to say the word 'friend'.

The Press Gallery have friends, between journalists and also with politicians. And curiously, across the House. Labour and National MPs who've gone overseas and travelled together have formed life-long friendships, even though they have political differences, because they're never going to be competing with each other for leadership of their respective parties. They know that 'this person is not a rival to me', he's on another team, and he'll never be stabbing me in the back to pursue his own career - he'll be stabbing his own colleagues in the back.

With Lange, Douglas and Prebble, do you think they were friends up until the political falling out?

How many divorced couples still speak fondly of each other? It was a genuine falling out, and I think it was a genuine falling out because they were such good friends, and that's why they feel so personally betrayed.

You talked, in your book, about when you were replaced as a columnist for the Listener, and you said that your replacement saw a lot of things she was disgusted with, things that you were beginning to take for granted...

Yeah, I can't remember what they were now. Probably the floggings and the beheadings. Which I use to enjoy, you know, getting blood all over my glasses...

What sort of things do people get desensitised to in Parliament?

The job for a journalist is always to remain as fresh as possible. There was a Budget night, and I thought "I'd done about 15 of these, how can I write about another Budget night with the same sense of excitement and magic as when I wrote my first one?" And when the thrill is gone, to quote BB King, it probably is time to let someone else come in who will sit in the Press Gallery and have that same sense of excitement you had the first time you were there. So, it was time to quit.

Do you still get excited about elections?

Not quite. The two parties are moving closer together and the structural changes to the economy have taken a lot of the excitement out of the race. And we don't have the same personalities! If we had a Muldoon, who, for a while, appeared to be the embodiment of all evil, and David Lange was so colourful - those individual races were very exciting to follow. But Helen is a sensible, hard-working, fiscally conservative person, and Don Brash is an intelligent, hard-working, fiscally conservative person.

I'm a huge fan of Michael Cullen's - I think Michael Cullen's brilliant. And when I was here covering politics a few years ago, day after day in the House, I thought he was just really really intelligent and quite a stunning debater. He's one of the smartest people I've seen in politics. He probably works too hard and become too earnest these days, but he was a huge amount of fun when I was reporting.

Did spending 10 years here change the way you viewed politics?

You age 10 years, you're going to see the world differently anyway. If I worked in an accountant's office for 10 years I... or perhaps I wouldn't? Bad analogy.

There was a time when you think 'well, this is the centre of the universe and I'm a very important person because I work here'. And there was a time in New Zealand when every dinner party in Wellington was politics, and because I worked in the Gallery and I was reasonably well-known, having battles with politicians, I was the centre of attention over politics. But we've matured since then, we've matured as a country, and Parliament is not quite as important as it use to be, and it's not on everyone's lips all the time.

Why do you say that that change is "maturing"?

A lot of the decisions aren't made in politics any longer. All those giddy changes, the social changes, like decriminalising homosexuality - you can only decriminalise it once! It was an important thing to do, and it was very exciting at the time, because there was so much resistance to it.

Did you get a sense of deja vu with the Civil Union Bill?

No, I think it didn't go far enough - they should be able to get married - but I suppose it's as far as they could go this time around. But there was incredible change to get to that point, to actually decriminalise homosexuality. The debate was so fierce and so intense, and so bitter - and I had a great time writing about all that sort of stuff. But you can't decriminalise it again, it's been done.

This country use to play sport with South Africa and there were those big debates raging, and those debates can't rage any longer. That's been sorted. So, in all sorts of ways, society is making the right decisions incrementally. It's very hard to protest against the Vietnam War now - it's finished. Real shame, they were great marches. You can't do those things over and over again.

What about the seabed and foreshore and the hikoi? How does that compare with the Land March in your days?

Race relations has moved profoundly! There's been fantastic improvement. I'm really proud of race relations in New Zealand, and we've come a long, long way. We've got a long way to go, but the debate is very healthy.

Most of the angry people are people over a certain age, and possibly their children. But amongst my Maori mates, they don't feel society owes them anything. And they don't have any connections with the seabed and foreshore, they never thought they owned it. "That bit of land between high-tide and low-tide, that belongs to me, you know?" - no one believes that.

But when I went to school, all the Maori pupils would walk across the ground, staring at the ground. The headmaster said once, 'there's an outbreak of thieving at the school, I know who's responsible, assembly dismissed, would all the Maori pupils stay behind please'. That was in the 1960s. And now you couldn't say that sort of thing and get away with it. It doesn't happen now.

Look at the number of Maori MPs in the House. That guy who got an Oscar. He's a Maori, [but] it doesn't need to be mentioned any longer.

Do you think the row over Seabed and Foreshore was a storm in a teacup?

No, it's an important row. I think the Government handled it badly, I think they should have let the law takes it course. I think we would have got the same outcome without having all the agitation. If there really was a great pool of Maori out there who believed they owned that strip of land, I'd like to find any Maori, anywhere, who's written a statement saying that 'we own the seabed and foreshore' before the row. It was always assumed it was owned by the Crown. The Crown thought it belonged to the Crown. Turned out there was a legal grey area, and people started suddenly saying 'oh, if you don't own it, IT'S MINE!'.

You think that reaction was generated by the media?

No, it was generated by some people who saw an opportunity and took it. And the Government overreacted and did the wrong thing for a while. I think it's calmed down. It wouldn't have calmed down if there was a genuine reservoir of Maori ill-will.

Do you think that talking-heads, adversarial style of journalism contributed...

I would machine-gun all talkback-radio hosts. I would line them up against the wall and shoot them. And then I'd track down the people who ring them up, and shoot them as well. I think newspapers and talkback radio, they have to generate anxiety and insecurity and controversy to generate sales.

I think in New Zealand, because we're small enough and isolated enough, I think there's still a great deal of trust in the community, and I hope it remains.

Do you think the media generated the momentum for the hikoi?

No, that hikoi was fantastic. That was more a response to Don Brash's assertion that there was hardly a full-blooded Maori left. He was saying that because every Maori chromosome in the country has been "diluted" then really the whole idea of Maori and Maoridom was an eroding concept, and we shouldn't pay homage to it.

Human beings have an appetite for controversy and things which break from the norm. [Cabinet Minister under Muldoon] Bert Walker, the only smart thing he said was "364 days a year, the Interislander Ferry sails perfectly; 1 day a year it hits an iceberg and sinks and suddenly it's all the news!" What about the 364 days it doesn't sink? Well, sorry, but the bad news is the only news, really, that's the way it goes.

If I called Wayne Mapp cognitively-challenged, would he have to demand that I call him "retarded"?

(Worst. Post. Ever.)