Wednesday, August 08, 2012



Dump Su'a William Sio

Labour's Su'a William Sio wants the party to dump Louisa wall's marriage equality bill in order to pander to supposedly bigoted South Auckland voters. I have a better idea: Labour should dump Su'a William Sio instead.

There are two reasons for this. The first, obviously, is principle. Labour calls itself a progressive party. It should therefore actually be progressive, and not play host to bigots like Sio who want to deny fundamental equality and keep some people as second-class citizens. Labour would rightly eject any MP who was openly racist and called for e.g. Pacific Peoples to "go home". It needs to recognise that those who would deny equality on the grounds of sexual orientation, and actively promote discrimination on those grounds, are no different from those who would do so on the basis of skin colour, and throw them out.

The second reason is empirical. Those Pacific voters Sio is so afraid of? They're actually more in favour of marriage equality than Pakeha are [PDF]. So Sio should be dumped purely on the grounds of general political incompetence. Not to mention tarring a valuable electoral group as bigots - I'm sure progressive South Aucklanders will be absolutely thrilled with that.