Some of the Māori Language rhetoric is just lip service minus lips and service – Jackson

Willie Jackson was the first Māori to be invited to the Oxford University to take part in the debate. Photo / Whakaata Maori
OPINION
You can’t talk the te reo talk if you don’t walk the te reo walk!
What we have is some in Government speaking out of both sides of their mouths this Māori Language Week.
On one side they pay lip service to the language, while they trash the political aspiration, culture and mana of the Māori people!
The Herald’s senior political correspondent, Audrey Young, criticised the sheer scale of race baiting rhetoric from this Government.
“If iwi feel as though they are being subject to a tsunami of anti-Māori policies under the coalition Government, it is probably because of the sheer breadth of measures accepted in National’s agreements with Act and New Zealand First,“ Young wrote.
It’s ironic then in Māori Language Week, the claims from David Seymour, that Act are at the heart of helping Māori language and iwi radio flourish and implied Act played a part in the establishment of kohanga reo. Yes, the kohanga reo founder, Dame Iritana Tawhiwhirangi, was a founding member of the Act Party in 1994, but tell David “I love Māori Language Week” Seymour that kohanga started in 1982, 12 years before Act was established.
Equally ironic in Māori Language Week, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith declared his admiration and support for the Māori language when just a few weeks ago he instructed his officials to remove te reo Māori greetings from his Matariki invitation to his Australian counterpart.
Our reo must be celebrated and advanced wherever possible.
Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka speaks the language and promotes the language and Shane Jones is without doubt one of the country’s finest speakers of the reo. However, this means little if we do not invest more money into the language and into Māori broadcasting.
Whakaata Māori CEO Shane Taurima has already announced cuts for next year because he’s been told there is no more money. Potaka’s response is that it’s actually my fault, that I should have negotiated more money when I was the Minister!
It’s a silly response. The job of negotiating sits with the incumbent minister and Tama needs to be negotiating instead of confusing everyone with his nonsensical bilingual responses in English and Māori.
Don’t get me wrong, Tama is a good man, and he’s passionate about speaking our language. But it’s his advocacy we need right now. We have a Government agenda hell bent on attacking Māori, so we don’t need lectures from the Minister about speaking the reo here‚ there and everywhere!
We have enough people who say that and do that – what we don’t have are people in positions of influence.
I can assure Tama, Māori want to see this and while Māori Language Week should always be celebrated, this week would have been as good a time as any for a change of strategy and a reminder to Tama about how tough it’s been to advance the language.
Māori broadcasting was seen as the best vehicle to advance te reo. What we have today has come via efforts of activists who put together the Māori language petition 50 years ago and took the fight for the reo to the Waitangi Tribunal and the UK’s Privy Council!
The same Waitangi Tribunal the Government wants to get rid of, and it was the Privy Council who told us the best medium to develop our language was through broadcasting.
I thought about that after watching Whakaata Māori and Te Mangai Pāho front the Māori affairs select committee and speak about their uncertain futures.
We have a Government who are using Māori as a political punch bag to gloss over obscene public service and social service cuts while wanting to pretend they care and value Māori Language Week.
This year it’s just lip service with no mouth, no tongue, no lips and no service!