I was just watching the Breakfast show as I was getting ready for work. They had that guy Richard O’brien on and were discussing his struggle to get NZ Citizenship and Paul Henry couldn’t help himself – according to Paul Henry, it would be nice to have some new migrants who weren’t useless….ummm – a high level of offence taken on that one.
I’m the daughter of one of those migrants that Paul is talking about. So Paul is saying that my own fathers contribution to this country (laying railway tracks and boning and packing meat for domestic use and export) – was a useless contribution. Its that kind of attitude that pisses me off. Every new migrant that comes here to work the shit jobs does so for low wages and very little recognition. The reality is that this country needs people to work those jobs – how many times does it need to be said – our health system would fall over if you didn’t have the cleaners in there working for minimum wage, doing the dirty work that most people would steer clear of ever having to do.
Get over yourself Paul – nothing would have fallen over if you had stayed in the UK. In fact – TVNZ would have been better off for it if you hadn’t come back.
Me
Dang it, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong are English speaking countries.
Thanks to the graces of Her Majesty, of course
Rebecca, your allegation that Carmel Sepuloni brought race into this is so wrong. The issue was regard for people who do certain types of work. It’s on one level, simply affected snobbery and class consciousness, but onn another a lack of respect for the value of people who don’t earn a “decent” salary.
Loota the issue is about relatively “new migrants” which generally applies to the 70s & onwards..
spaceman/Oaks: I’m just calling it as I see it; Carmel’s interpretation of Paul Henry’s comment pertaining new migrants goes too far.
She is the one that took such personal offense. I am merely questioning whether she has good reason.
I’m sure Paul Henry has John Key pillow cases, he is conservative, dull and transparent.
Was Paul Henry’s comment racist – maybe, did it show Paul Henry’s personal prejudice yes, probably making him a racist.
Does Richard Obrien AKA Riff Raff have a right to come to NZ
absolutely.
There’s always plenty of commentary on Red Alert from NACT supporters who feel that x CEO on $60,000 per month is a far more important human being than y peon who is on minimum wage.
More important to the company’s shareholders perhaps, but that is not the same thing, is it.
Rebecca, Carmel didn;t bring race up you did ergo – perhaps its you who goes too far…?
Oh Loota what rubbish. Anyone who puts in a hard days work is on equal footing with any highly paid CEO (oh, and didn’t you mean $600,000 – $60,000 isn’t much for a CEO!).
Paul Henry, by stating “useless” in the context above was clearly implying those who don’t work and/or who don’t look for opportunities and try & put their best foot forward…
Loota yes she did. Or at least that is my interpretation. Refer to my post at 4.33pm.
Rebecca said:
No, AGAIN – she brought in her own family & newly migrant father into it who was able to come & live in NZ under a quota scheme based on race not skill. Or at least that is what I have gathered from Carmel’s biography.
You are just looking for ways to defend the indefensible; Carmel’s post was completely OTT.
There are economic migrants to NZ and then there are refugees. Both come here for a better life and generally work very hard, whether as blue collar workers or white collar or entrepeneurs. Our salaries are not what give us value it is our commitment to being as good a person as possible in our families and our communities. I was an economic migrant, came in under the skilled workers scheme – work hard, pay taxes etc, but I am no more valuable than the people who clean our streets and hospitals – migrant or not.
Go Paul Henry. We do have a heap of migrants who offer nothing. Look at what a dump the UK is now, largely due to huge numbers of Muslim migrants from Pakistan/Bangladesh who don’t want to fit in. Netherlands is the same. It’s no surprise they are both about to tighten their immigration laws.
Carmel, you are also paid by the taxpayer, and all you do is whinge about immigration/Pacific issues. I don’t agree with my money being spent on you to do that.
”Pisses me off”…”Shit jobs”…very poor language for a well paid politician.
The MPs pay for this blog out of their own pockets and can talk about anything they damn well please!
Good on her! 
There’s nothing wrong with her discussing issues related to her constituency!
Kiwireader – a tad harsh but you have a point seeing as Carmel is meant to be the spokesperson for Civil Defense and Associate Spokesperson for Tertiary Education & Social Development..
Haven’t heard much about Civil Defense or Tertiary Education….CD is particularly important given our propensity for earthquakes!
Geeez, did’nt you people read what Carmel wrote.
Henry is a Richard Head of the first water.
Look around when next you visit hospital, (for whatever reason)
who is doing the menial work. It’s the old story I’m afraid,
if you don’t want to do it yourself, pay someone to do it for you and pay them well. NZ is such a low wage economy we will never ‘catch’ Australia while we are.
Apparently the right will make up ridiculous accusations of racism, launch sly insinuations about lack of class in use of language, and infer that those with money legitimately see themselves as having some right to control what MP’s should focus on in their representation of constituents or even say make a topic on a blog.
It reminds me of the invention of the term class war to describe any politicans who advocated for the poor. Clearly the post has touched a nerve amongst the more sensitive of the middle classes, they do see themselves as superior to the working class and get very niggly when called on this.
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” – Warren Buffett in 2006.
@Rebecca – Carmel is not confined to only talking about her portfolios. MPs do personal posts too, why shouldn’t she mention stuff like this? You didn’t mind it when Trevor wrote about his harrowing cycle race!
@Rebecca my comment is in m oderation, have put in my two cents too.
To those who are suggesting that I am making this a ‘race’ issue – I am not the one who brought ‘race’ in to the equation. I was talking about Paul Henry’s attitude towards migrants.
To IN SUMNATION re: ‘Get off your high horse, and start showing some comprehension….he was referring to new migrants. Your father is obviously a migrant from a while ago’….OH – So that makes it better??? So given given my father came here in the 1960’s, I should feel a sense of pride in the fact that he might be deemed as more acceptable now – and not feel any sense of compassion for our new migrants that face unwarranted prejudice????
Just a reminder – I’m a Labour MP – our experiences fuel our passion for advocating for others. Its the Nats who forget where they came from and pull up the ladder on people facing the same challenges they faced.
Rebecca said:
No AGAIN Rebecca, Carmel brought up the fact that her family immigrated here and it was *you* who put the race based spin on it and expressed it.
Carmel did not say a single thing in her post about race or ethnicity.
By your ‘logic’ Carmel will be unable to make any comment about immigration without being race based just because she is P.I. when in fact she has much which is valuable to share.
Check your ‘logic’.
Thanks for your post Carmel.
NACT spin and spin and spin. It is good to see Labour smashing that spin back.
Only just read through this.
Loota says:
June 9, 2010 at 4:41 pm
And seriously…what proportion of people posting here have 100% NZ family roots which stretch back even 2 generations. You know, without either a parent or grandparent who was born overseas.
No not me. My Mum was born overseas. Born in Liverpool. My grandfather worked on the wharfs in Wellington, he was a merchant seaman back in England. The way they were treated back then was shocking I’ve been told. My grandfather on my Dad’s side hated my mums family and her due to the fact they were ‘poms’ apparently. Mum was picked on at school and so quickly lost her accent in order to fit in. NZers didn’t like people from England back then and it was looked down upon I’ve been told.
I don’t think it was something that anyone should say and Paul Henry should be called on it.
I’m directly descended from the Cantonese goldminers who came to Otago in the 1860s gold rush, and my mother was a refugee from the Chairman Mao regime.
There was a resurgent wave of Anglophobia in the 1970s when Tim Bickerstaff egged on listeners with the ‘Punch a Pom a Day’ thing, around the time Britain joined the EEC and decided it didn’t need to trade with us as much as they used to.
When I was sent to what was supposedly the most prestigious secondary college in ChCh, the perception was Merchant & Ivory, but the reality was more Kath & Kim.
Loota 10.27pm…”It is good to see Labour smashing that spin back”??? That’s a rather generous way of putting it!
DeepRed re “sent to what was supposedly the most prestigious secondary college in ChCh, the perception was Merchant & Ivory, but the reality was more Kath & Kim”…..yes know what you mean there.
So you have low standards too Spud..that’s sad. I would never let the young people in my house use this kind of language.
I’m sorry if I’ve offended you
Carmel you almost had me until you said “Its the Nats who forget where they came from and pull up the ladder on people facing the same challenges they faced.”
Your post about Paul Henry was completely OTT and like it or not you did bring race into the equation as by bringing your family into it you were referring specifically to the Samoan Quota scheme – a scheme based on race.
You have also generalised by implying that all new’ish migrants (including refugees) & by default their off spring, are worthy of being in NZ.
Sorry, but the crime statistics show otherwise.
It is THIS that Paul Henry was referring to. And rightly so.
Someone like Richard O’Brien should be given priority. Period.
@Rebecca: like it or not, the Samoan quota is here to stay. NZ does have a right to choose, but there needs to be some perspective. The Pacific quotas aren’t in place out of PC-ness, it came about after the Privy Council ruled in 1982 that raising the drawbridge outright on Islanders was unconstitutional. And often the quotas have gone unfilled.
And if you can ignore the commenters’ bile, DPF has some reasonable facts on the quotas.
I do agree it’s weird that Riff-Raff isn’t allowed back into the country he grew up in. It’s not like he’s going to be a burden on the health system if he’s comfortably living off the royalties of his works. On the other extreme, Australia exploited a loophole to deport an Aussie-raised criminal back to us, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.
Rebecca said:
Funny thing is Rebecca you were the one who mentioned race first.
Paul Who?
Why let TV workers grace your thoughts as being more important than others.
Cheap chatter without responsibility is often a hall mark of many “front” people on the box.
The celebrity status and importance given to them is ridiculous. Why go along with it.
Perhaps some of our sheep are bipedal.
Worth given to anyone is independent of their family history in NZ. I cannot count the generations of my forbears in this country but if I did bother to ascertain that number, it is irrelevant to any argument or personal worth.
Proclamations with elitist values embedded are as despicable as the personal motivations of the speaker, and worth little.
Pointing this out is fair game.
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