Wayne Mapp's joke portfolio aside (I guess they had to give him something to not do, after all), there's a few other things I noticed about today's opposition reshuffle. The first is that Georgina te Heuheu gets to sit at the back of the bus with Pansy Wong again. Isn't it time the two of them took a few lessons from Rosa Parks? Secondly, they seem to have forgotten someone: while they now have liaisons to Pacific Peoples, women, youth, and Asian New Zealanders, they don't have a liaison to Maori. It's a rather telling absence, and signals exactly the priority they put on consulting with or listening to Maori: none at all.
Thirdly, there's the justification for Nick Smith's appointment as energy spokesman:
With a PhD in engineering, Dr Smith is the most qualified MP in Parliament to take oversight of this area.
Well, except for the Greens' Jeanette Fitzsimons, who was lecturing and publishing in this area when Nick Smith was still in high school...
4 comments:
"they don't have a liaison to Maori"
They have a Maori Affairs spokesman and two associates. What would be the point??
Posted by Anonymous : 10/27/2005 12:42:00 AM
They also have a youth affairs spokesperson as well as a liaison. The two aren't exclusive, and you have to wonder why Maori were ignored.
Posted by Idiot/Savant : 10/27/2005 02:43:00 AM
I have to say the Rosa Parks analogy is so stunningly trivial, I'm still trying to decide whether to laugh or get very, very angry.
After all Rosa Parks lived to see a black woman - born and raised in "Bomb-ingham, Alabama", no less - become the Secretary of State, and seriously talked about as a Presidential contender. In 1955, to use your analogy, it would have been unthinkable that Rosa Parks would have been on the Capitol Hill buss in the first place.
I would also note that Maori women received the right to have a voice in electing their own own Government - however flawed the practice was, and is - long before their sisters in the American South.
Posted by Craig Ranapia : 10/27/2005 07:09:00 AM
Considering CR's response to the Rosa Parks analogy, NRT hit a bull's eye!
Posted by Hans Versluys : 10/27/2005 01:09:00 PM
Post a Comment
(Anonymous comments are enabled).