Hon Peter Dunne
MP for Ohariu
Leader of UnitedFuture
Monday, 11 July 2011

The ACT Party has a problem with Maori to such an extent that it chooses to insult Maori politicians by deliberately and consistently mispronouncing their names, UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne said today.

“Their weekend advertisements come out of precisely this kind of cynical and nasty politics – and ACT needs to take a hard look at itself,” Mr Dunne said.

“Where there is no disharmony, they look to create it.

“This is not where New Zealand and New Zealanders are today – and certainly not with the mean-spiritedness that it takes to deliberately set out to insult and disrespect any other person.

“When you get everyone from Don Brash to Rodney Hide to Hilary Calvert seeming to go out of their way to mispronounce names such as Tamihere, Harawira and Tariana – none of them awkward names to get your tongue around – then you know something is going on.

“It is the dog-whistle politics of disrespect,” he said.

“We can all mispronounce names from time to time; we can all slip into old habits and go back to 70s white pronunciation of a Maori name or place name we grew up with. That is not the issue.

“In my experience, Maori make a lot of room for that.

“But it is not possible for an educated, articulate, aware New Zealander today to not know basic Maori pronunciation. That means the choice not to pronounce correctly is deliberate, and I think the motives for that are never good.

“If you want goodwill back from someone, then show them goodwill.

“ACT and its caucus need to ask themselves what sort of goodwill and harmony they want in this country and maybe take some steps towards that,” Mr Dunne said.

“In the context of all that, their weekend ads speak for themselves.”

ENDS

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