Kiwiblog

Willie Jackson labeled John Ansell a racist and a fool in Truth. He said:

Treatygate is a nonsensical racist campaign where Ansell and a few rednecks go around the country spouting about what they perceive as inequality and Maori privilege.

I met Ansell by accident in Waitangi. He is a more than cordial type of bloke. I said to him I thought he was a racist, and so he challenged me to have him on our RadioLIVE talkback show.

Ansell spent two hours with me and John Tamihere last week and absolutely confirmed my view he is a racist and a liar.

Ansell has responded in Truth saying Jackson is a “chronic liar” who fools no-one:

Maori bully boys and extortionists like Willie Jackson like to get down in the sewer and call critics like me racist.

It’s just a trick, and it doesn’t work on me.

So why does Jackson throw mud instead of facts? Because he knows he  can’t compete on the history. He hasn’t got a clue about what happened between the Crown and Maori in the nineteenth century. So he just spits out an endless stream of half-truths and lies, and hopes you’ll believe him. He’s a chronic liar.

There is, of course, a big difference between criticism and racism. I’ve never said anything racist. That’s not me.

But I’m very critical of Maori leaders who have a financial interest in keeping their people at the bottom of all the bad stats. That way they can keep claiming the big bucks – most of which they keep for themselves…

The debate continues!

Hayden Donnell at NZ Herald reports:

Radio Live host Willie Jackson has called for striking wharfies to mount violent “militant action” in their ongoing battle with Ports of Auckland bosses.

Mr Jackson, a former trade union organiser and Alliance Party MP, supported the striking port workers’ calls for eight hour shifts and job security on his Radio Liveafternoon slot today.

He called Ports of Auckland bosses “greedy, filthy, right wing fundamentalists” who were led by a “gutless wonder” mayor.

Intimidation or violence was needed to stop non-union workers being called in to do the striking workers’ jobs, he said.

We first saw some violence on the protest, against counter-protesters. Then there was damage done to at least one car this morning. And now a former MP is advocating there needs to be more violence and intimidation.

Will the CTU and/or the Maritime Union condemn Jackson’s remarks, and say they support peaceful protest only? Or will they implicitly condone them, by remaining silent? For they are the ones who have organised the picket line, so they can’t say it is nothing to do with them.

UPDATE: Jackson now says he only wants the union to be more militant and use greater intimidation, but not use violence, after his earlier remarks were highlighted.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

Former Greens MP Sue Bradford today confirmed she will stand for the Mana Party in the Auckland electorate of Waitakere against Social Development Minister and sitting National MP Paula Bennett.

That is great news for Paula, as Bradford will split the left vote with Carmel Sepuloni.

Meanwhile, Maori broadcaster Willie Jackson has decided not to stand for Mana in Tamaki Makaurau against Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples.

And that is good news for Sharples. I think the risk of him losing was much greater if Jackson stood as Jackson would be competing with Sharples for votes.

He was also concerned he would split the vote in Tamaki Makaurau and enable Labour candidate Shane Jones to win the Maori seat.

And Willie knows Shane is the most right wing Maori MP in Parliament (after Jami-Lee Ross).

Willie Jackson writes in the NZ Herald:

Radio Waatea was contracted to provide daily news bulletins during the week of approximately two and a half minutes in duration four times a day. For that we were paid $280,000 a year which covered four journalists and our admin costs. And that was our national broadcaster’s commitment to the indigenous people of this country during the working week.

Let’s do the sums on this. 10 minutes a day times 250 days a year is 2500 minutes a year of headlines, or around 42 hours of news bulletins. For $280,000 that is an hourly rate of $6,720 an hour.

Now that has to cover reporting, editing etc but I’m pretty sure that that hourly figure is higher than most broadcasters.

With no more than 10 minutes of Maori stories a day, that equated to 0.1 per cent of National Radio air time. That’s about as close as you can get to nothing, zero, bugger all. But, hey, they were giving us 0.8 per cent of their $36 million annual budget, so I guess that’s something!

Well yes, it suggests to me that if they bring it in house, they may be able to afford to do more than 0.1%.

But even that figure is misleading. National Radio is not 24/7 news stories. Most of it is interviews, talk etc.

Their actions and attitude towards Maori is nothing short of shameful. Successive Governments have allowed National Radio to treat Maori in this way. And, sure, they can pat themselves on the back because Simon Mercep and Katherine Ryan are able to pronounce a few basic Maori words, but the Government really needs to intervene to ensure that a Maori voice is heard on a station that is meant to reflect this country’s identity.

Surely National Radio giving Maori only 0.1 per cent of the programming time requires some response from the Government?

This is presuming that Maori are not interested in any of the other programming,. It would be interesting to see what Radio NZ’s listening demographics are.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff has admitted National’s Hekia Parata could win the Mana by-election if turnout is low.

His press secretary, Kris Faafoi, is standing for the seat, traditionally seen as a Labour stronghold. But yesterday Mr Goff said a low turnout would “jeopardise Labour’s hold on the seat”.

Goff is trying to do two things here. The first is to motivate Labour supporters to turn out and vote. He is right – turnout is important.

The second is he is trying to make the seat sound marginal, so that if Labour’s majority is slashed, it does not reflect so badly on them.

Mana is one of their safest seats. It (and its predecessors) have never been held by National. Mana has a larger majority than Lianne Dalziel in Christchurch East, Trevor Mallard in Hutt South and Jim Anderton in Wigram.

A few people point to the party vote margin at 2,500 and say this means it is not safe for Labour. But they make a fatal mistake. The releveant comparison with the party vote is between right and left, as both right and left voters will vote tactically on the electorate candidate (many green voters vote for a labour candidate and many ACT voters vote for a National candidate).

So what was the party vote for the right in 2008 in Mana? 39%. And the left vote? 53%.

In the median electorates, the right is 8% ahead of the left on the 2008 party vote. In Mana the right is 14% behind the left on the party vote.

Now this does not mean Hekia can not win. She has been winning endorsements from some non traditional National voters. Even Willie Jackson and John Tamihere have come out and said people should vote for her or Matt McCarten (partly because they fronted up onto their radio show).

But the reality is that no Government has ever won a seat off an Opposition in a by-election. I’ve checked back over 90 years. If Hekia wins, or even comes close, it will be a seismic event.

After his display of head slapping, Len Brown should perhaps be known as Loosehead Len – and this is one of the kinder things being said. I’ll start with Kerre Woodham:

Just when I didn’t think things could get any worse for Len Brown, he goes and does it again.

And before his fans leap up and down and say I’m part of some spooky right-wing conspiracy, I’m not.

He had my vote before the events of the last couple of weeks. Not for any particularly compelling reason. I just thought that if we had a centre-right government, it balanced things up a bit to have a centre-left mayor. …

Then came the claims of persecution and the protestations of being victimised. That was unattractive, but what really turned me off was the performance Brown gave to the Manukau City Council on Tuesday night.

When I say performance, I don’t for a minute think he was acting. Far from it. I think he believed every word when he cried out passionately that he’d risen from his hospital bed after a near-fatal heart attack for the love of the people.

That when he walked in the door, looking like a bloody skeleton, it was because he cared, not because he could put a few more cups of coffee on the mayoral credit card. I’m sure that’s true.

But emotional blackmail is hardly a rational response to requests for financial accountability. Nor is beating yourself about the head and face.

That was weird. In his soliloquy, Brown repeatedly hit himself in the face and chest, saying if people had a problem, they should come and see him.

That was enough for me.

You need somebody a little less … overwrought … as mayor of New Zealand’s first super city.

And that is from a Grey Lynn liberal who was planning to vote for Len Brown.

Next Matt McCarten. Matt is as left as you can get:

This brings me to the parallel universe of local government politics in which Labour Party-backed mayoral hopeful Len Brown has credit card problems of his own.

His use was careless at best and, as many Aucklanders don’t know much about him, his misuse will worry them. But it was his response, like Carter’s, which is more revealing.

The cutting up of his credit card on television was a cheap stunt. Was he saying he can’t be trusted with a credit card to do his job?

Well perhaps he was, as he seemed incapable of keeping proper receipts and he outright refuses to comply with his Council’s own policy to identify who was at a dinner.

His explanation on why he used his card to buy personal items was because his wife had their joint card raises more concerns. Everyone knows couples can get a card each on joint accounts.

And as they are signature cards, you can’t borrow each other’s card. That one had porkie all over it.

It’s good he apologised but his emotional presentation to his council was disturbing. His opponents can’t believe their luck and are predictably using it as evidence Brown is unstable and loose with ratepayers’ money.

But Len explained away his actions as being the Maori way to do things. Fortunately the SST has talked to some actual Maori on this claim:

But broadcaster Willie Jackson rejected that. “The spin about it being a Maori gesture is rubbish. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Jackson said Brown’s team had made a poor decision in claiming a cultural element to the antics.

“I don’t know what the hell they were talking about, having been a Maori every day of my life,” Jackson said. “Len needs to harden up or he’s going to gift this campaign to John Banks.

“This campaign was his to lose and he’s doing a good job of that.”

Willie is also of the left. This is hardly the vast right wing conspiracy. Willie was also backing Brown over the credit card before his display at Council.

Once Were Warriors star Temuera Morrison said what Brown did was “more like caveman stuff”.

He said haka participants slapped their chests and thighs “to get unison with everyone and feel the rhythm”. The gesture to invite people to “come and get me” usually involved poking out the tongue.

“I don’t know what this guy was doing,” Morrison said. “This guy is on another planet.”

Ouch.

Auckland University Maori studies expert Dr Ranginui Walker was also unconvinced. “In the old days widows used to cut their breasts and chests when their husbands died or when warriors were slain.

“But I’ve never heard of men doing any such thing.”

Well we can at least be relieved Loosehead Len didn’t start cutting himself on live television.

The Herald on Sunday reports on a novel new method of complaining about a broadcaster. After she was cut off on talkback, a woman called Margaret turned up to see John Tamihere and WIllie Jackson, along with a “dangerous looking dog”.

Now imagine what fun radio it would have made if she had managed to get inside the broadcast booth with said dog. You’d hear barking, running, growling (probably from Willie!), screams (from JT), and general mayhem. It would be a wonderful boost to ratings. And eventually people would hear the sirens as the Police turn up to shoot the dog, and the ambulance turns up to patch up the hosts.