As candidates report physical assaults and racist attacks, prime minister Chris Hipkins says some parties are ‘deliberately trying to persecute minorities’
ne of New Zealand’s youngest political candidates, 21-year-old Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, has experienced more politically targeted abuse in the past week than many senior politicians have experienced in their entire careers.
“When I said Aotearoa, the crowd shouted ‘it’s New Zealand’,” Prime said in a media conference, adding she was told to stop speaking “that language”. Te Pāti Māori’s co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, told the Guardian the party was no stranger to hate speech and online threats, but that the attacks directed towards their candidate, Maipi-Clarke, had crossed a line.
“Christopher Luxon reiterated his commitment to abolishing the Māori Health Authority in favour of ‘one system for all’,” Hipkins said in a speech on Friday. “One liners like ‘one system for all’ [are] putting the narrative that Māori somehow are getting things that other New Zealanders aren’t. This approach plays on people’s fears – it’s not pretty and it’s wrong. It also ignores basic facts.
But the tenor of his response to accusations of race-baiting was more charged online. In a social media post, Seymour accused Labour, Te Pāti Māori and “their allies” of being the “real racists” and, in another post said the current government had been “the most divisive in NZ history” for “going after landlords, farmers, business owners, the wealthy and the unvaccinated”.
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