Censure pardons the raven but is visited on the dove. Sort of.
Also the best thing to happen to Goff since Melissa Lee stuck her hand up for Mt Albert:
On Radio Waatea this morning, Harawira apologised for his language, but not the content of the email, and stopped short of apologising for his jaunt to Paris.
Near the end of his interview with Maori broadcaster Willie Jackson on Radio Waatea this morning, Harawira said Goff should be “lined up against the wall and shot”.
Harawira: “I’m about to hammer Labour again, over Phil Goff saying I should be suspended, you know, from politics – the cheek of the bastard…”
Jackson: “Careful.”
Harawira: “Him and his mates, no seriously, him and his mates are responsible for the passing of a piece of legislation described as the single largest land nationalization statute in the history of Aotearoa. Now if I should be suspended for swearing, him and his mates should be lined up against the wall and shot,” Harawira said.
Harawira was referring to the passage of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, which National and the Maori Party are in the process of repealing.
Goff’s office said the Labour leader would be holding a press conference early this afternoon to respond to Harawira’s latest outburst.
I’ve been mulling over a post about the format of a political apology; we’ve seen a few of them recently, and until today I was under the impression that our political leaders have a generic script that they work off:
- Deny that you’ve done anything wrong.
- Explain to the media that your scandal is ‘a beltway issue’/'not a story’. (Journalists and their editors have enormous respect for the news judgement of politicians.)
- Play the moral equivalence card. (‘The Labour Party’s crimes against fiscal prudence were far more terrible than the mutual and loving acts of which I stand accused.’)
- Confuse the issue with technical details. (‘Age of consent laws do not apply to other species, only humans. Let me refer you to the Crimes ACT 1961 Section 143 which states quite clearly . . .’)
- Play the victim: you are being persecuted because you are [a man/a woman/Maori/white/married/unmarried/have a family/are childless/ are gay/a ginger].
- In the incredibly likely event that none of these have worked meet with your press secretary and examine private poll data on the scandal. If it looks grim then publically apologise for creating the perception that you may have done something wrong. Make a token gesture of repentance (‘Although I did not harm any of my neighbours plants – quite the opposite – I have offered to pay my neighbour the full replacement value of the succulents in question and undertake to stay out of his garden on moonlit nights.’).
I’m not sure how Hawawira’s new stratagem fits in – we’re through the looking glass here people – so it’ll be interesting to see how it works out for him.
You know the saddest aspect of all this: If an election were held next weekend, Hone would be back in parliament with a majority twice as large as it is now.
Comment by Phil — November 10, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
I for one liked it. If he’d apologised for the sentiment it wouldn’t be him.
It wasn’t a short interview, and while there was a prepared statement (mostly (6) with bits of (3) and (5)?) that sure wasn’t part of it. Hone is going for the standing-by-the-sentiment part of the sorry-about-the-choice-of-words thing more heavily than usual.
I guess what I mean is, of all the politicians, Hone would be a pick for not sticking precisely to a chosen line. And the Goff thing – in conxet – is again more the kind of thing you don’t say because it gets you in trouble rather than because it’s evil.
Audio: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0911/S00112.htm
I find it weird theres a furore over racism. The thing that got me about the email, apart from the lack of diplomacy, was how self-serving it was. Though it did sound like someone bored of a situation they didn’t want to be in who had stopped behaving.
Comment by lyndon — November 10, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
It only has to work for the people of his electorate. Just like Rodney’s apology.
I was kind of hoping he’d be more profane.
Comment by llew — November 10, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
NZ Herald doesn’t even dare to be upset with the Goff should be lined up and shot. It’s buried in the article. I think race has won in this country and we can know definitively say goodbye to one law for all.
Comment by Berend de Boer — November 10, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
A simple fisk of Hone’s statement:
“Him and his mates…”
This assumes that Phil Goff has some mates, for which there is no clear evidence. Certainly Cunliffe does not count.
“…should be lined up against a wall…”
This is clearly unacheivable, since so many Labour MP’s are away overseas on their MP travel perks at any one time, so you could never get them all together to line up against a wall.
“…and shot”.
A stupid statement. Unless he means Phil Goff’s chances of ever becoming PM are shot. Then it would be factually correct.
Comment by Pat — November 10, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
For clarity, and seeing as I have an interest in people being allowed to use figures of speech:
He didn’t say Phil Goff should be shot. In fact, he seems to be implying Phil Goff shouldn’t be shot.
Comment by lyndon — November 10, 2009 @ 12:40 pm
I for one liked it. If he’d apologised for the sentiment it wouldn’t be him.
Maybe one day he’ll recognise that ‘him’ is a bit of a dick sometimes, and modify his behavious appropriately.
Comment by StephenR — November 10, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
“In fact, he seems to be implying Phil Goff shouldn’t be shot.”
I was just thinking this. Presumedly Hone thinks he shouldn’t be suspended, so thinks Goff shouldn’t be shot. Freudian editorialising perhaps.
Comment by garethw — November 10, 2009 @ 12:50 pm
You know what I like about Harawira. He’s an honest bastard. For that I can forgive him an awful lot.
Comment by George Darroch — November 10, 2009 @ 1:07 pm
yeah, but he isn’t is he?
I mean, he took taxpayer money on false pretences. We didn’t pay for him to go visit bloody Paris; we paid for him to go to Brussels to do some work. He knew the deal at the time, and then he literally took the money and ran. That’s not honesty.
Fair enough, i don’t actually think he did anything really wrong, and I respect him more for that than much else he’s done, but it was hardly a shining example of honesty was it?
Comment by Keir — November 10, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
I mean, he took taxpayer money on false pretences. We didn’t pay for him to go visit bloody Paris; we paid for him to go to Brussels to do some work. He knew the deal at the time, and then he literally took the money and ran. That’s not honesty.
Neither is telling your party leader that you’re sick, when you aren’t.
Comment by StephenR — November 10, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
FWIW he said the sick thing was a misunderstanding (felt sick when he talked to her in the evening, she understood that to refer to the whole day).
For all that citing history of opression is icky in justifiying a trip to Paris, it seems odd to me the email is bigger than the side-trip. He’ll no doubt have to pay a proportion back (remember Australia?).
Comment by lyndon — November 10, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
I’m still more pissed off that he bunked off work to go to Paris. kind of like calling in sick but being spotted on TV at the cricket in another country that I used the company credit card to get to and calling my boss a f**ker when he calls be on it.
I’m totally trying that this summer.
Comment by philonz — November 10, 2009 @ 3:26 pm
Hone is playing his version of the moral equivalence card. “So I visited Paris – you pillaged our land and oppressed our culture for 160 cultures” etc. There is no rational answer to this play.
Comment by Mr February — November 10, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
For all that citing history of opression is icky in justifiying a trip to Paris, it seems odd to me the email is bigger than the side-trip. He’ll no doubt have to pay a proportion back (remember Australia?).
Personally I couldn’t care less about the trip to Paris; I’d be more worried about any politician (any human) who preferred a meeting in Brussels to a day out in Paris for the first time.
The email’s pretty dodge, and he’s going to get stick, and the Goff comments are dumb and he deserves to get in the neck for them, but really, Harawira’s main crime has been inadequate slickness, which I don’t think is really a hanging offense.
But claiming he’s particularly honest? Nah.
Comment by Keir — November 10, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Clearly this was Hone’s “Last Tango In Paris”
We supplied the butter.
JC
Comment by JC — November 10, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
Hone was playing with his kittens—a black and a white kitten, the offspring of Dinah, when Hone ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror, and to Hone’ surprise, is able to pass through to experience the alternate world. There, Hone discovers a book with looking-glass poetry, “Jabberwocky”, which Hone can read only by holding it up to a mirror. Upon leaving the house, Hone enters a garden, where the flowers speak to him and mistake him for a flower. Hone tells the flowers to stick their motherf*cking racist white bread rules up their f*cking @rse and then pulls his Glock-9 and pops a cap in the ass of Phil Goff and the mother*cking Labour shadow cabinet
Comment by expat — November 11, 2009 @ 1:49 am
more importantly, how is brussels feeling after being blown off for paris? Tourism Brussels needs to pull finger.
Comment by Chris — November 11, 2009 @ 10:37 am
Dear god, expat’s brilliant comment makes the whole sorry affair worth it for me….
Comment by Conrad — November 11, 2009 @ 11:05 am
We didn’t pay for him to go visit bloody Paris; we paid for him to go to Brussels to do some work.
Yes, he didn’t find visiting with the comrades much fun. A meeting in Brussels: that’s not work, that’s a f**king punishment.
Comment by Clunking Fist — November 11, 2009 @ 11:53 am
yeah but- if that cop had said ‘…always blow on the pie MOFO!” He’d have been sacked, vilified by the media, and chastised by the race relations commisar.
Comment by Grant — November 11, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
I’m still rather bemused that on Hone’s planet “motherfucker” is demeaning to women. No it isn’t, in any society where incest is not only taboo but criminal it’s demeaning to the person you’re applying it to, regardless of gender. But you know that, don’t you?
Comment by Craig Ranapia — November 12, 2009 @ 8:16 am
Hone lives on planet motherfucker orbiting the star welfare
Comment by expatt — November 12, 2009 @ 8:58 am
“If he’d apologised for the sentiment it wouldn’t be him.” & “He’s an honest bastard. For that I can forgive him an awful lot.”
The problem here is that he visited Paris for his own personal pleasure. He was not on Maori business, did not represent them and did not further their cause.
When asked about his trip, he makes it about Maori, (which is dishonest as it is about him personally) and some people take the bait. (It is called framing the debate.) The question to him should be “how do your actions for selfish reasons and personal gain benefit Maori?”
If it was truly about Maori and the belief that the seabed and foreshore has been stolen and he took all Maori to Paris for a trip at Pakeha expense (to get something back), then it would be a different story.
Maori did not benefit from his trip (other than those who got T-shirts), quite the contrary.
Comment by cj_nza — November 12, 2009 @ 10:01 am
Dear God, Conrad?
Comment by expatt — November 12, 2009 @ 10:14 am
Maori did not benefit from his trip (other than those who got T-shirts)
It reads: Hone went to Paris, and all I got was this lousy attitude problem
Comment by Phil — November 12, 2009 @ 10:45 am
… And I think he might have gone to Paris for the same reason this woman did:
http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/living/i-married-the-eiffel-tower-832519.html
Comment by Phil — November 12, 2009 @ 10:48 am