Not often I critique colleagues posts but I think Grant Robertson’s post on Paul Henry’s comments missed a couple of important points.
First and less important is that Henry’s continuation of his racist behaviour as a National Party candidate into his TVNZ role has been encouraged, especially over the last year, by the TVNZ management obeying the government’s order to boost ratings.
Second and more important was the way Key smiled and giggled during the Henry performance.
It is all very well going to the UN and claiming that children of immigrants to NZ can do well – but the real test came when Henry implied that those who don’t have white skins aren’t real New Zealanders.
Key you are a gutless poll driven worm.
***Henry implied that those who don’t have white skins aren’t real New Zealanders.***
No he implied those who aren’t Maori or Pakeha (ie. signatories of the Treaty) aren’t NZ’ers.
***Calling someone a “gutless poll driven worm” is not politics. It is pathetic and childish behaviour. What benefit does that comment have to anyone?***
@ Student,
I agree, these kind of feral comments do not reflect well on the state of NZ politics.
“Key you are a gutless poll driven worm”
Trevor that arrogance is going to bite you on the backside- Labour party candidate arrested for electoral fraud hiding behind name suppression? Who is the gutless party now.
On ‘Agenda’, 13 April 2008, John Key looked into the future of his government:
“…they spend their life in a pretty incoherent plan from what I can see, but I don’t think they actually have a plan for where they want to go, they seem to get their focus groups and their polling out and that decides what their next policy is.”
Precisely, John, precisely.
Goff said that he thought Key should’ve said something, this to me implys that he would’ve gone ape
It looks like your leader is a gutless poll driven worm too Trev. Wow, that is extreme language that would get me moderated if it wasn’t word for word exactly what you said.
Why is your leader a gutless poll driven worm Trev? Because yesterday he said it was just Paul Henry being Paul Henry, and overnight he comes out all cannons blazing. Some of the left blogs aren’t very impressed with that gutless, poll driven wormness Trev.
Trevor
Care to give evidence that Paul Henry is:
“a National Party candidate”
And i dont mean a past candidate. i mean a current one as you are implying in your post.
Shame that you have had to throw that little sideswipe in when mentioning a legitimate concern about Paul’s behaviour.
Trevor
Thank you for saying what had to be said.
Like John Key, I have Central European, Jewish refugee antecedents. Unlike John Key, this history has given me an abhorrence of racism in any form.
Key’s pusillanimous response to Paul Henry’s clearly racist comment left me wondering: “Which part of ‘Never Again’ don’t you understand,Prime Minister?”
If TVNZ is to be believed, Henry is deliberately (and shamefully) employed as a potboiler and provocateur. But Key is employed as Prime Minister. It’s about time he started behaving as such.
The dude was distracted campaigning in Mana, give him a break, when he got time to read what was said then he responded. Not a worm, he wasn’t there, not his fault
I am suprised and a bit disappointed that in Phil’s response he felt it necessary to defend the Governor General. John Key did the same of course, focussing on entirely the wrong thing. The issue was never whether Mr Satynand is a good chap, the issue is that Paul Henry’s assessment of a persons worth is based on their racial/ cultural heritage and that he feels no shame in expressing his noxious views, to the detriment of us all. Even his “apology” makes it clear that for him a British person rates higher than a Fijian Indian, who in turn rates higher than a person of Gyspy origin. Shame on him; and on TVNZ for attributing such racist, old fashioned crap to the rest of us.
Because a few people have missed the point the worm is the animation that the “peoplemeters” produce to signal approval or lack thereof.
Used to be used during live TV leaders debates. Remember Bolger getting a dive when he said people often die in hospital and Dunne getting big approval when he said commonsense.
So computer generated animation rather than the variety in my compost – but if the righties think the cap fits they can wear it.
Gutless I stand by. It was the Prime Minister’s role to deal with Henry then and there – giggling and saying shucks is just not good enough.
Troll warning Trevor
@ interesting – read it carefully – he can’t be a candidate at the moment.
Umm what in my comment was trolling ???
“He … tries to please everyone”
While I do agree, I prefer it to Labour who try to divide New Zealand into poor people vs rich pricks
Oh come on trev, pull the other one. We all know what kind of worm you were talking about and now you’re gutlessly trying to worm your way out of it.
@SP “No he implied those who aren’t Maori or Pakeha (ie. signatories of the Treaty) aren’t NZ’ers.”
Firstly SP Pakeha can refer to any non-Maori race.
Secondly assuming you take the closed meaning of British and Irish immigrants that doesn’t make the statement any less racist. To deny that people are citizens based on their race regardless of the fact they are born here is racist whether or not you exclude one race from the statement or two. A quarter of our population fits that category. I am fairly sure he also wouldn’t say people descended from Americans are not Pakeha which further compounds that it is about skin colour and not about treaty signing origins (as little as someone distantly related to you signing a document over 170 years ago has to do with where your home is…)
@smhead maybe I’m a political junkie but I know what worm is driven in polls. Me gutless – you must be joking.
Trevor – your comment was offensive. Not in Paul Henry’s league, but still not a good look.
I too was hugely disappointed Key didn’t stand up to Paul Henry, but as Goff was almost as weak until he saw where public opinion was going, your criticism of Key alone makes you look silly.
Key is PM, he was on the spot, he should have slammed Henry down instantly.
The Prime Minister caught on the back foot by a two bit media personality, amazing. Key totally complacent around racism and shown to have neither the guts or the gumption to respond to protect the hundreds of thousands of honest hard working NZ’ers of ethnic background that Henry was racially insulting in front of his very face.
Yeah Trev you are a political junkie and a very experienced politician, and you knew how people would interpret your words when you called the PM a gutless worm, and you knew you meant it in the way that almost everybody interpreted it, which was not as in polls.
What you said wasn’t offensive in the Paul Henry league, but it was just crass and tasteless. I think you are deliberately trying to undermine your own leader by drawing attention to how long it took for him to condemn Henry. Yes Key was there on the spot, and he could have condemned Henry straight away, but what was worse was your leader had time to reflect on what was said and he still said it was just Henry being Henry.
Then suddenly today (maybe a bit of polling in between?) your leader comes out and finds new courage he didn’t have yesterday. That’s poll driven if I ever saw it.
Nonsense head – I was with Phil for much of yesterday – there is a big difference between being read a comment by a journalist and seeing the context and the giggling Key reacting.
No polling just seeing it as live.
Of course it would have been netter to have a feed available for Phil to look at – a lesson for us.
Why is every one spending so much time on this when there are things to discuss that are actually, LIKE, relevant and serious happening. http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/10/04/unlocking-our-potential/comment-page-1/#comments
I think this is an appropriate way of describing Key’s attitude:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qyHS4met7c
Thanks Victor. Best laugh of the day.
Hey Trevor you hit the wrong button. Better – not netter.
I’ll take your word on that Trev. I’ll make the additional point that it does seem funny for you to get your knickers in a twist about somebody else making an offensive comment.
Ha! So it was a lack of proper info getting to Phil that was the REAL problem!
Anne, Trevor can’t see the keyboard properly anymore since he decided to shove a picture in front of his face!
Let’s all make allowances for his new disability 
Apologies Trevor
I have reread the bit and see that you were not implying he is a nat candidate.
once again apologies.
cheers
Political pot calls political kettle black… Lol, I do so love it when Trevor tries to claim the moral high ground…
I’ve been in Sydney for a few days and come back to find Trevor has spit the dummy a few times on Red Alert and then Clare and CV have both popped up to claim the complaining is a right wing conspiracy… Hilarious…
I think I/S summed it up perfectly:
stanley key is a gutless soulless nancy boy. there, the statement is public. if people have a problem with that, then maybe we can see an example or two that shows this to be false… simply whining about the statement itself does nothing to disprove it. what it does show is that key’s support is facile and mindless.. can anyone show why this may not be true? i’m waiting….
He didn’t change the smacking law… That pis*sed me off…
Welcome back mate. Next time don’t be in such a rush to return home.
This is offensive. Clare