WAITANGI, (New Zealand): New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour on Friday (Feb 6) brushed off criticism of his claims that colonisation had been positive for the country’s indigenous population and labelled hecklers “muppets”.
Seymour, who leads the right-wing ACT Party, made the comments on Feb 5 in a speech marking national Waitangi Day celebrations, an annual political gathering that gives indigenous tribes a chance to air grievances.
When he rose to offer a prayer during the dawn service on Feb 6 at the Waitangi Upper Treaty Grounds, where New Zealand’s founding document was signed in 1840, dozens of people started booing and shouting for him to stop.
Another person blew into a conch shell in an attempt to drown out Seymour’s speech.
“The silent majority up and down this country are getting a little tired of some of these antics,” Seymour said.
His administration has been accused of seeking to wind back the special rights given to the country’s 900,000-strong Maori population.
He told journalists that the hecklers were “a couple of muppets shouting in the dark”.
On Feb 5, Seymour, who himself is Maori, told those assembled at Waitangi that colonisation had been a net positive for the indigenous people of New Zealand.
“I’m always amazed by the myopic drone that colonisation and everything that’s happened in our country was all bad,” he said.
Maori today remain far more likely to die early, live in poverty or be imprisoned than New Zealand Europeans.
Following Seymour’s prayer on Feb 6, left-wing Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins was also loudly jeered by those in attendance.
On Feb 5, indigenous leader Eru Kapa-Kingi told parliamentarians that “this government has stabbed us in the front”, while the previous Labour government had “stabbed us in the back”.
“Why do we continue to welcome the spider inside the house?” he asked. - AFP
