Can Someone Eradicate Wayne Mapp?

Wayne Mapp is at it again, criticising among other things the fact that Census forms are to be made available in Maori.

Get over it, Wayne. Your own party brought that in. It is a reasonable thing to have official forms available in both official written languages. It does not suddenly make the country bilingual.

The whole campaign still stinks to high heaven. What reactionary right wingers label "political correctness" is nothing more or less than treating people fairly. It's about treating everyone equally under the law, and not allowing discrimination, bigotry, etc to triumph. That's in line with the ancient Kiwi value of giving people a fair go.

People simply displace their own fears onto people who are different. You can choose two approaches to this politically. You can stand up for equality and fairness, which is Labour's approach. Or you can pander to people's fears, and try and implicitly say "it's okay to dislike them, we're on your side." That is despicable politics and it is National's agenda. One of the many reasons they should not be allowed back in government.

Wayne is in many ways a thoroughly decent man. He should be ashamed that he is being used to propagate dog-whistle politics like this.

Hat tip Tony for the speech link.

Comments

[Cadmus]

Your spot on Jordan when you say...

"Get over it, Wayne. Your own party brought that in"

That's the problem with National they bought most of this PC B/S into legislation under the Shipley govt, More women in CEO postions, Not forgeting he Biggest Treaty Settlements in NZ under a National govt. Yes, National wanting to see themselves as a New Age everones party, but it backfired.
The true face of National came out under Brash.
And now we have the Maori Party on the opposition benches with National, joke!

I wonder if the Maori Party will be backing Mapp on this issue?

[Graeme Edgeler]

Wayne Mapp was not criticising the decision to have census forms made available in Maori, this has been going on for a number of years.

You have been able to answer the census in Maori for a number of years as well - and Wayne Mapp was not criticisng this.

What Wayne Mapp was criticisng was the decision to give everyone a census form with the questions written in both Maori and English. This has not happened before, you could easily get one of these if you asked, but if you didn't say anything you got one written in English.

[rightkiwi]

for godssake, who the fuck cares? mapp needs to get a life

[tim barclay]

You Labour people really start to get quite strident on this issue. It just encourages me more. If you Labourites hate it then Wayne must be on to something good. QED

[Keir]

To quote Iain Banks, in Dead Air:
"Political Correctness is what Right-wing bigots call what everbody else calls being polite."

How does it affect Mapp if there are parts of the Census that are duplicated in Maori?

I suppose he's scared that he'll see the Maori, and be infected by it or something.

If the Census can be completed in either, what difference does it make?

Well, it makes it easier for people who prefer using Maori to English.

That's it. It makes it easier for people to fill out the Census, thus providing better information for Statistics NZ, and the rest of the goverment, thus making it easier for the govt. to provide services.

If the Census was only being distributed in Maori, that would be an issue, but, it isn't.

Also, it isn't even being distributed in Maori and English throughout the country; only in "Northland, Eastern Bay of Plenty, East Cape, East Coast, Poverty Bay, Northern Hawke's Bay and the Chatham Islands" will the Census be bilingual.

Mapp needs to grow up.

[Kent]

Can someone tell me how much tax money Mapp's research team gets? 'Cos it's arguable whether it's too much or not enough.

[Sam]

I guess you could object to the extra expense, and the waste of resources that is involved in sending more paper to everyone - Especially when all those that read and write Maori can also read and write English. It seems reasonable that those that prefer to read their census in another language should apply for it in that language - not just Maori.

And come to think of it, if labour truly believes in equality, shouldn't they be sending census questionnaires in all languages spoken in New Zealand - Chines, Samoan, Indian, etc.?

If you ask me this policy has nothing to do with equality, and everything to do with the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi - the PC charge becomes somewhat appropriate in that case.

[Craig Ranapia]

Keir:

Well, that's a typically dopey - and superficial - soundbite from the grotesquely over-rated Ian Banks. Perhaps he should stick to the unreadable SF?

I wonder if Banks considers the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill - which will make it a criminal offence to "insult religions" if it passes through the Commons this week - merely polite? Because I call it political correctness of the most toxic and dangerous kind.

[James]

Mapp has a very good point. Practically, there is no need for the census forms to be written in both English and Maori. Virtually all New Zealanders speak only English, with only a tiny percentage of people speaking Maori.

There is no sensible reason for the government to waste large amounts of money producing a census document with both English and Maori. It's a basic waste of tax-payer money and Mapp is correct to criticism this kind of wastage.

[GeniusNZ]

The census should be presented in he form most likely to get the most answers with no regard at all to either politicaly correct use of maori or politicaly correct LACK of use of maori.

[Keir]

Banks is over-rated, but then, anyone once called the "great white hope for British literature" would be.

I don't see what the acts of the HoC in London have to do with the descision to be more bilingual in handing out Census forms.

As to the monetary argument, you do realise that Stats NZ has been translating the Census all along, right?
The only additional cost will be printing, and I don't have a clue about the printing business, so I'll leave that one.

I can't imagine that, on such a massive job, the costs increase by that much.

So, it doesn't cost much more, and we might learn more about the population, allowing us to make wiser choices about spending.

All of the above arguments are pragmatic; there is also the fact that we like to say that we are a bilingual nation (so much so that we made it a law, the Maor Language Act 1987), and things like Censuses should be bilingual, if we are to be bilingual at all.

[tim barclay]

There is a good side to PC and in excess there is a bad side. It can discourage people from expressing opinions and force people to say and do the most daft things. But I think NZers are sensible enough to see PC gone mad. I hear it everywhere. Wayne is doing a good job highlighting some of its absurdities. The left (thank god) turn that into a general defence of the practice of PC. Bring it on please.

[James]

I agree! We need people like Mapp to point out the waste created by policies such as this.

This isn't a question of political correctness, or racial division. It's a simple question of resource allocation. There is no need for the government to provide census forms written in both English and Maori.

[M'lud]

The bilingual forms are empty symbolism. How many people are able to read Maori better than they can English?

[Millsy]

Wayne Mapp is a Nazi, plain and simple. If he had his way, Maori and Euro will be pissing in seperate toilets and there will be "no Irishmen need apply" in our job ads..

[Russell Brown]

"What Wayne Mapp was criticisng was the decision to give everyone a census form with the questions written in both Maori and English. This has not happened before, you could easily get one of these if you asked, but if you didn't say anything you got one written in English."

No, that's not what he says at all. From the speech:

"Statistics New Zealand has decided our country should not only have two official languages, but that we should also become bilingual. During this year’s census, every person will be asked whether they want the census form in English or in Maori. Statistics New Zealand has printed 600,000 forms in Maori and 4,500,000 in English. When did we have the debate on whether New Zealand should become bilingual?"

Whatever. The speech itself is weird - it reads like a very earnest attempt to retrospectively justify his "job". In its laborious attempts to classify and associate an array of disparate phenomena to satisfy a theory, it recalls nothing so much as some godawful lefty thesis from the 70s. There are real complaints in there, but they're *diminished* by being thrown together into a whingefest.

Cheers,
RB

[Kiwi in Zurich]

Goodness, is this whole debate petty or what? Living in a country that has four official languages and forms available in all four it is not conceivable that you wouldn't have forms available in the official language, and provide those forms to the locations where people who speak that language live. That being despite people being able to speak more than one of the official languages. It seems both respectful and sensible to me to provide the forms in Maori and English to those areas with a large number of Maori in the population. I'd hate to think tax payers money was funding Wayne to stir up this sort of nonsense.

[Craig Ranapia]

Millsy:
Sit in the corner and drink your lithium-flavoured fuckupachino - that's a good little troll. The adults are having a semi-rational conversation.

Keir:

The point is that the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is a toxic piece of political correctness from an ostensibly left-wing Government with a disturbing fondness for attempting to legislate manners and morals. And before you trot out the tired old bromides about PC being a fantasy of "right-wing bigots", I'm mildly encouraged to see a broad coalition resisting this bill - which might discourage people like Tim Barnett who are disturbingly keen to criminalise speech here.

And Russell can sneer about "whingefests", but I wonder what's really going to help Maori who are too often on the wrong end of every educational indicator? Superficial and meaningless plastic tiki tokenism, or an education system that is serious about turning out citizens whose are (as a bare minimum) functionally literate and numerate?

[Millsy]

So, Craig, you think it is OK for someone to preach racial hatred in this country. the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is dfesigned to stop the Ku Klux Klan from setting up shop here...

[M'lud]

What a rubbish debate. Jordan wants to tackle the man and not the ball, actually he wants to "eradicate" the man in this case. The rest just shriek "Nazi!" "Nazi!!.

Since when did NZ law treat everyone equally? If that was the case then Orewa Mk 1 wouldn't have touched the chord it did.

[Craig Ranapia]

No, Millsy, I believe I live in 21st century New Zealand not a medieval theocracy where offending the sensibilities of religious fundamentalists is a crime.

And I'm sure the British Labour Party cooked up the R&RHB with the very best of good intentions, but (as the saying goes) I'm not interested in the paving stones on the road to hell. I'd rather not walk it in the first place. As a person of faith, I actually think it demeans faith when we behave as if we require special protections from the rigours of an open society that values freedom of speech, a free press, and a free marketplace of ideas.

But I guess there are plenty of Brian Tamikis and Abu Bakar Bashirs out there who'd dismiss everything I've said as anti-religious "hate speech".

[Russell Brown]

"The adults are having a semi-rational conversation."

Haha. We need a banner with that on it.

But Craig, read the speech. It *is* a rambling whingefest, and it offers a definition of political correctness so expansive as to be meaningless. Any actual sound points in it are diminished by their setting in the speech.

Cheers,
RB

[Russell Brown]

"The point is that the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is a toxic piece of political correctness from an ostensibly left-wing Government with a disturbing fondness for attempting to legislate manners and morals."

No argument from me on the Blair government's smothering tendencies. Nice to see the Lords amended it to take our the prohibition on "abusive or insulting" statements. (There is a slightly better argument on "incitement". Interestingly, Blair's first attempt to get this through was as part of anti-terror legislation.)

But I'd be interested for you to show me exactly where exactly Tim Barnett was "disturbingly keen to criminalise speech here." According to Tony Milne, Barnett was one of the Labour MPs who argued *against* drafting a hate speech law.

Cheers,
RB

[Keir]

I never defended either the R&RHB, or the Blair govt. I don't know enough about that matter, and it isn't germane to the point at hand.

But, to be honest, I actually think that even if you accept that there are absurd cases of PCism, won't they fall over in and of themselves when examined, without the need to label them?

I.e. Political Correctness may, possibly, be useful in understanding the origins of ideas, but that has no bearing on their value, as ideas.

In the same way, while an understanding of Hegelism may be useful to the understanding of Marx, it is not needed in order to disagree with the broad sweep of his argument.

[Cathi]

Wayne seems to have missed a point here - the only people being required to be bilingual in NZ are those who start life speaking one official language and then, because of our educational system only operating in the other language once you get to a certain level, having to change to the other.

The only people who are required to be bilingual in NZ are Maori. Is this Wayne's real agenda? Maybe he really does want to put a stop to people being required to be bilingual - maybe he wants to have Maori language schools, universities, polytechs, banks, transport systems, government offices, employers, police forces, prison systems...apartheid anyone?

I don't **think** that's what he's saying. He probably just doesn't like seeing words on a form he doesn't understand. Poor baby.

[Mark]

It's a policy across all government departments which I agree with.

Maori is an offical langauge of NZ. So is English.

If people want it in Maori then fine.

If the forms are provided in both English and Maori to all NZders then I agree it's a waste of resources and money.

[Stephen Cooper]

I'm not very convinced by the "waste of money" argument.

You would have to print some hundreds of thousands of extra census forms, in case people changed their minds and switched, and you would have to hire extra staff (beauracracy) to get the right forms to people and then get the right forms back to where they need to go.

In fact, this whole thing may very well have been done to save on costs through streamlining.

[Stephen Cooper]

* the second paragraph refers to the old system of Maori census forms by request

[cc]

I think a clarification is needed. Only a handful of forms will be bilingual and these will be delivered to areas with a high Maori population (http://www.stats.census.govt.nz/news-media/latest-news/Maori-English-census-forms.htm). From what I gather, previously there had been both Maori and English forms and people in those areas were asked which they prefer. How this change is a a waste of money, I have no idea. The only possibility is that the forms had to be larger and therefore cost more to print, but this may be offset by the convenience of only having to deliver a single kind of form to these regions (if you have two kinds of forms, presumably you probably need more extras in case you run out of either). As far as I can see, everyone is just jumping on the 'it wastes money!!!' bandwagon as it is a politically correct way of complaining!

[Craig Ranapia]

RB:

You're quite right, and I'm happy to apologise to Tim Barnett for the error. We've got enough real differences without creating new ones. :)

[Rich]

Iain Banks is a god-like genius. Except the SF shite. And "Song of Stone". When I'm short of a role model, I turn to one of his coke-snortin, bad-ass liberal heroes, like Cameron Colley or Ken Nott.

Something "Kiwi in Zurich" might have noticed is that of the four official Swiss languages, one (Romansch) is spoken by only around 50,000 people, almost all of whom are also fluent in German. The Swiss keep the language in use however, because it's part of their culture. Just as Māori is part of ours.

[Kiwi in Zurich]

Rich,
absolutely, and that is why it is sensible publish it in Maori and send it to high Maori populated areas, and all NZers should celebrate it.

[Paul Le Comte]

To quote Mapp (thanks Russell) "When did we have the debate on whether New Zealand should become bilingual". Oh, only since day one of European settlers. No debate needed, NZ is Bilingual and infact multilingual.

Anyways, read the Hansards (or statues) people, legally the only offical language of the country in written law is Maori, nowhere is it written that English is the offical language of NZ. It's just a peculiar habbit we have in this coutry speaking English, as opposed to having it as a legal right.

So the challenge to Tim et al, show me the statute that decries the Mother Tounge as the language of the land by law.

[Paul Le Comte]

And by very definition Mapp must be shadow political busy body. The equivalent of Ena Sharples, not actually contributing to the wealth and growth of the nation, instead opening one's mouth to contribute an opinion for the sake of being contrary.

Was this man ever a hall or milk monitor at school, I bet he picked on 3rd formers for having their socks down.

As insignificant as my life is, I'd be bloody embarrased to be Mapp, what a joke.

[ZenTiger]

Most of the examples I've seen of Wayne Mapp identifying PC have been poor examples. This latest is no exception.

He needs to learn what P.C is, before eradicating it.

Regarding the bilingual census, I personally think this approach is fine. The most one can argue is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Lets skin it this way, this time round.

(Can I say "skin a cat"?)