Not that I want to breath life into a "political" party that's obviously been started for racist ideals, but The Pakeha
Party needs a little bit more attention, if only to refute their defunct
beliefs.
As far as I can tell The Pakeha Party wants
to further ostracize an already downtrodden people, because they think that
Maori are living a life of privilege. They believe Maori are gaining too
many "things" and that Maori-only policies are unfair. This is reminiscent of the now defunct Act party, whose catch phrase of 'one law for all' was a veiled attempt at hiding their separatist agenda.
Likewise, The Pakeha Party's platform is flawed and
ignores a couple of huge elephants in the room, one being that Maori are
obviously not living a life of privilege. In fact Maori are over represented in
nearly every negative statistic you can think of, from higher unemployment to
lower life expectancy and higher rates of suicide. Most of these negative
statistics are related to poverty, which is unfortunately getting worse in New
Zealand especially within Maori communities. Therefore the argument that Maori
are somehow privileged is completely wrong!
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| David Ruck - founder of The Pakeha Party |
This brings us to the next issue...policies
that specifically target Maori. The question people need to ask themselves is
whether they think that restitution should be made for past injustices? If the
answer is no, then that answer is either based on ignorance or prejudice.
History shows us that Maori were severely persecuted by white colonizers, with the injustices that occurred still having adverse effects that in my opinion need to be rectified through legislation. You don't steal a people's land and then reimburse them 5% of its value without there being consequences.
The only way to remedy the problem is to
have targeted policy that helps Maori work towards parity, and to that
end political parties that are focused on achieving such goals are advantageous. Only through targeted policy will we see a
reduction in the negative statistics that are a very real reality for the
majority of Maori people. Only then will we see true equality in Aotearoa New
Zealand.
