“The organisation that deals with complaints about media content says people don’t deserve protection from racism, ironically because of their race. It concluded that it’s not possible for white people to be victims of racism, seemingly unaware the conclusion itself is racist”, says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“In defending Stuff’s publication of ‘The 250th anniversary of James Cook’s arrival in New Zealand’ by poet Tusiata Avia, the Media Council says ‘less powerful groups…can seldom be racist’.

“New Zealanders will be appalled that a double standard is being applied to racism in the media.

“After receiving a number of complaints about a poem that incites violence against white people, the Media Council concluded the poem ‘provides some balance to a long-running debate’ about colonisation.

“The Council said that describing violence against people based on their ethnicity was somehow not racist:

‘Racism is typically defined as discrimination by a powerful institution, group or person against a group or person based on their race or ethnicity. In colloquial terms it means “punching down”. So while less powerful groups or people can be discriminatory (and therefore subject to Media Council principles) they can seldom be racist…The poem arguably uses dark humour, but it is not laughing at the powerless or another’s misery. Neither, given the personification of Cook, is it describing a real life situation. It is punching up at a more powerful race and gender, not down.’

“To translate, if you’re Pakeha, you’re fair game for what would be racism if the targets were Māori or Pasifika.

“In a modern liberal democracy, all people should be held to the same standards, but the Media Council believes it is not possible for people of some ethnicities to be racist. That is in itself discriminatory.

“Rather than seeing the poem for what it is – an angry, racist tirade from someone who paints all Pakeha with the same brush – the Council tied itself in knots trying to explain that descriptions of women using pig hunting knives to kill white men are just ‘artistic devices’.

‘Most of the complainants are concerned at the murderous violence described in the poem, but James Cook in this poem is not a person living in modern-day Christchurch and the violence is not real. Cook in the poem is a personification of all Pakeha male colonists over the past 250 years, or indeed of colonisation as a process that from the viewpoint of many indigenous peoples, often brought with it theft and violence, amongst other, arguably more favourable things. Personification is a common artistic device used across cultures and centuries, most often seen in newspapers when employed by cartoonists. By casting this ‘Cook’ as a modern day criminal on the streets of Christchurch, Ms Avia seems to be arguing not that James Cook himself was a rapist or murderer, but that the violence of the colonisation that followed Cook (often perpetrated by “white men like you”) still has repercussions today. Where many of the complainants see the poem as inciting violence, another reading of it suggests the poem is describing a legacy of violence and anger that the poet blames on colonisation.’

“If a Pakeha poet used such ‘artistic devices’ about another ethnic group, they would not be feted by the media, funded by the taxpayer, or published; they’d be cancelled. Complainants rightly pointed out that was a double standard.

“The Government and media have rightly called for less division and more civility in our society. New Zealanders will find it hypocritical that they have funded and published this piece of ‘art’.

"All in all, this sad episode shows how out of the touch media and government can be.”

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