Mike's Minute: The Govt's race relations have left us more divided

There was a fascinating poll off the back of yesterday's comment on this show around DOC paying employees to learn Māori . To recap, you get $3500 if you speak Māori but it's not necessary for the job. No job is not done because of a language issue. It's merely part of the public services desire, driven by Government demand, that we introduce a level of Māoridom that, in theory, addresses past wrongs, balances the ledger and pays appropriate tribute and importance to the Treaty. But in reality it just drives a lot of us nuts. The poll asks the simple question - "do you believe race relations are getting better or worse?" 14 percent say it's getting better, 47 percent say it's getting worse and 35 percent think it hasn't changed. That's quite the gap. The number doesn’t surprise me and the sadness is that it didn’t have to be this way. As we have argued all along, there was never anything in anyone's way to embrace Māori culture or history and never anything stopping anyone learning the language. But through a combination of Government arrogance and ideological blindness, not to mention a tin ear, they went headlong into the world of indoctrination and tried to drag us all along for the ride. As a result we've got an angry, divided nation, part of which will play out on October the 14th. It’s the school curriculum, it’s the infiltration at universities, it’s the place names, the company names and the greetings on the phone these days from Government workers who don’t speak Māori any more than anyone else does, but they think by saying "morena" that somehow means they're a bona fide bandwagoner. The six o'clock news, a bulletin once produced in English, is now a faux multilingual experience with phrases, that stats and facts tell us very few people even understand. For example, weather forecasts, that in tough times actually need to be understood for safety reasons, using names for places many have never heard of. It all adds up. And before you know it, the frustration builds to a point where things like co-governance has become a lightening rod issue. An issue that, as we have seen in meetings, can lead to violence. Violence doesn’t make it right, and there is no excuse for it, but if you don’t take people with you, you end up with a poll where 47 percent say race relations has gotten worse. A result that is the exact opposite to what was intended.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.