Tuesday, August 18, 2009

MALLARD THE MALLET

So Labour MP Trevor Mallard thinks the whanau of five in the Janet Moses High Court case, escaped prison because they were Maori.

"I am certain that a Pakeha exorcism that resulted in torture and death would result in a prison term - albeit not necessarily a long one.

The fact that they weren’t sent to prison because they are Maori just doesn’t seem right to me."

He’s so wrong. The Moses whanau were lucky to have escaped jail given all the statistics regarding Maori and sentencing.

Relative to numbers in the general population, we Maori are over-represented at every stage of the criminal justice process. We are 12.5% of the general population aged 15 and over, but 42% of all criminal apprehensions are Maori. Our men make up 50% of prison numbers and sadly our women make up about 60% of the female prison population.

So no, this whanau didn’t get slapped with a by-pass-jail-because-you’re-tangatawhenua ticket.

But Mr Mallard likes to slap around the odd Maori. Remember a couple of years back in 2007 he cuffed Tau Henare after the National backbencher teased the then Cabinet Minister about his love-life. The boys took the argument outside, Mallard whacked Henare and the pair had to be prised apart.

A few years before that Mallard tried to pass himself off as tangatawhenua. In a speech he made as Race Relations Minister in 2004 he reckoned, "Maori and Pakeha are both indigenous people to New Zealand now.”I regard myself as an indigenous New Zealander – I come from Wainuiomata."

Yes Mr Mallard certainly is pro-Maori…yeah right!

1 comment:

  1. Trev may or may not be right there, personally I don't have an opinion but would like to think that it is not the case. I am not a fan of Mr Mallard, or many of his colleagues, however I do object to your last sentence - Mallard was most definately NOT trying to pass himself off as 'tangata whenua'. I am a New Zealander not of Maori descent and I also consider myself to be native to this country. As a fifth generation Kiwi there is nothing else I could be; though I am proud of my Scottish and Irish ancestry. I certainly wouldn't use the term 'tangata whenua' in any case - an arbitrary term really as you can say that about anyone anywhere. I mean for how long do a people need to be somewhere before that term, or it's meaning, applies? We are all tangata whenua of the Earth. All of us.

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