Outrage is growing over the ministers’ continued disparagement of Green MPs’ immigrant backgrounds, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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NZ First MPs go on the attack
It was just three weeks ago that the debating chamber was up in arms over remarks by Winston Peters and Shane Jones that were labelled racist and xenophobic. On that occasion, Peters demanded that Green MPs Lawrence Xu-Nan and Francisco Hernandez, both migrants, “show some gratitude” for being in New Zealand.
Shortly after, Jones yelled “send the Mexicans home”, apparently at Mexican-born MP Ricardo Menéndez March. Later he doubled down, telling reporters that Menéndez March “swaggers around in parliament, been there five or 10 minutes and thinks he can tell Winston and I what to do … He brings alien ideas and woke-ism to New Zealand.” Peters eventually backed down after the Mexican ambassador got involved.
Three weeks later, Peters has another go
It seems Peters has no intention of backing down over his latest attack on Menéndez March. On Wednesday the deputy prime minister again raised the MP’s migrant background, this time because the Green MP referred to this country as Aotearoa when asking a question in the House. Said Peters, over the jeers of his fellow MPs: “Why is someone who applied to come to a country called New Zealand as an immigrant in 2006 allowed, in this House, to change the country’s name without the mandate, the approval, or referendum of the New Zealand people?’”
The Greens say they’re outraged – not only about the comments themselves, but also over the prime minister’s apparent reluctance to discipline his deputy for making them. Christopher Luxon hasn’t yet responded to a letter the Greens wrote to him following the previous incident, Menéndez March told Morning Report. The NZ First leader has made a career out of scapegoating immigrants, he said. “And yet we have a prime minister who is showing absolutely no leadership and is unable to stamp it out because he’s afraid to hold Winston to account.”
Please don’t tell Winston Peters about this MP
Luckily for Peters, there are no immigrant MPs in his own ranks whose presence might make him look a tad hypocritical – oh wait. Writing on The Spinoff, Toby Manhire asks us all to “Pray for Andy Foster. Or, better still, hide him. As the New Zealand First list MP will be acutely, tremulously aware, his party leader is presently on something of a rampage, lasering his gaze across the benches of parliament at any MP who has the temerity to (a) deploy Māori language and (b) be an immigrant.
Wouldn’t you know, Foster fits the bill. “Yes, he is a migrant to this country. Yes, he embraces te reo. Yes, he said Aotearoa in parliament. But he is one of us. He is Andy and he is a Kiwi.”
‘Woke banking bill’ to be debated
Notwithstanding The Spinoff’s concerns for his wellbeing, Andy Foster is having a pretty good week. Foster’s so-called “woke banking bill” will be debated in parliament after it was drawn from the ballot on Thursday. The bill would ban banks from discriminating against businesses based on their sector when deciding whether to issue loans. “It was designed to prevent banks from debanking the likes of petrol stations, coal miners and farmers for environmental or social reasons,” explains the Post’s Rob Stock.
Federated Farmers banking spokesperson Richard McIntyre is pleased the bill will get its moment in the spotlight. It would “shine a white-hot light on big banks that have been forcing their ideological views down the throats of everyday New Zealanders,” he said.
