“Aotearoa is regularly used as a name of New Zealand,” Speaker Gerry Brownlee said in a ruling on Tuesday at Parliament in Wellington. “It appears on our passports and it appears on our currency.”
Ricardo Menéndez March, from the left-leaning Green Party, used the name Aotearoa during a question to a government minister. The composite word means “land of the long white cloud” in te reo Māori, the Māori language.
Winston Peters — who is deputy prime minister, foreign minister and leader of the populist party New Zealand First — objected in a point of order.
A flamboyant politician who is New Zealand’s longest-serving current lawmaker, Peters favors populist policies and has been decried before for remarks about Asian immigration to New Zealand. Peters, who is Māori, opposes initiatives intended to advance Māori people and language.
If he’s the same Maori politician I’ve seen speaking on such subjects before, he doesn’t want Maoris to be treated with special privileges. He wants all people to be treated equally.
Seems fair enough to me.
Except they haven’t been. Sounds like the same argument against affirmative action
…because it is the same argument. It’s equity Vs equality.
The problem with what winston is fighting against is that Maori signed a treaty with the crown and Winston wants to remove all that they were promised.
Its not about equal rights its about signing a founding document then backstabbing.